Before a well-coiffed room that included George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Sigourney Weaver, Sir Ben Kingsley, Salma Hayek and others, producer Judd Apatow reached out from the podium for help in finding the proper British way to pronounce the name of automaker Jaguar.
The man that Apatow was trying to honor, English comic Sacha Baron Cohen of Borat fame, came to the rescue. "Jaag-you-are," Baron Cohen offered from a nearby table to chuckles from the crowd assembled Saturday night for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' Britannia Awards.
Jeff Curry, brand vice president for Jaguar in the U.S., was pleased. He is out to conquer Hollywood for the storied British automaker, and the Apatow/Baron-Cohen exchange had just given him a boost.
If anyone should know has to win hearts in the entertainment industry, it's Curry. He came to Jaguar earlier this from Audi, which proved masterful at wooing Tinseltown in recent years. Audi has been particularly aggressive in plying celebs with loaner cars and assembling fleets of Audis to ferry them to high-profile events around town in a relentless drive to polish its image and make inroads into fellow German brands BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
This time, however, Curry is planning to throw away the Audi playbook. Though Hollywood may be known for superficiality, Jaguar will succeed "only in an authentic way," Curry says between bites of stuff chicken breast in the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton. "It's really something we want to happen organically and naturally."
Jaguar's moment has come, he says. Starting with the 2012 London Olympics and running through the debut of William and Kate's royal baby, America are again becoming smitten by United Kingdom. "There's this cultural moment with all things British," Curry says. The crush has happened before, Curry notes, but was often been nostalgia tinged, whether it was Beatles album reissues or Austin Powers movi! es. Now, it's happening "in a forward-looking way" with entertainers like singer Adele and fashion from Burberry.
A Jaguar may be fierce cat, but Curry sees the brand as a scrappy underdog. But not too far under: Sales doubled last month compared to the same month the year before, and are up 36.2% during the first 10 months of the year. The XF sedan is leading the charge and to keep the momentum going, Jag plans a splashy introduction for the F-Type coupe at the Los Angeles Auto Show next week.
While every luxury brand regularly takes a crack and becoming the darling of the entertainment set, Jaguar sounds particularly serious. Like any starlet, it has an agent. It has contracted ICM, the big Hollywood talent management agency, to work on its image.
It has ICM, the big talent management agency, under contract to help with its image. ICM clients Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child and Berenice Marlohe, an actress who appeared in the last James Bond installment, Skyfall, dined with Curry at the awards dinner. ICM's job is to make sure Jaguar's models appear in the right places and that luxury buyers have Jaguar on the brain when it comes time for a new car. It will be portrayed as a smart alternative.
"We're hitting at a time when people want another choice," Curry says, meaning a luxury car that isn't necessarily German or Japanese.
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