Jack Wills capitalises on Blackness in cringeworthy rebrand

As part of a push to expand its customer base, Jack Wills has called on influencers and TikTok stars. Instead of gilets and rain boots, the brand is launching beanies, sweatsuits, and other more casual styles. 

But it’s the new ad campaigns that are drawing bemused responses. Londoners have shared their confusion online after Jack Wills launched their ‘IT’S A VIBE’ campaign in March. 

The images feature a group of young people. Only one of them is white. In place of the rolling British countryside is a rowdy house party. They’re piled on top of one another, wearing puffer jackets and sweatshirts. 

Many have called out the suspicious decision to emulate a more ‘urban’, explicitly non-white aesthetic as a means to survive. 

‘Jack Wills trying to rebrand itself as a cool, urban, trendy clothing brand makes me laugh. Company spent years branding itself for poshos and toffs and it’s now trying to capture the streets’ said one twitter user. 

The same demographic once excluded by Jack Wills is now being co-opted by the brand. 

This empty marketing ploy is – in some twisted way – reassuring, in that it proves brands can no longer survive without being inclusive. But it also promotes the commodification of cultural and racial groups, the prevalence of harmful stereotypes, and the idea that representation alone is enough.

Journalist Charlene White addressed Jack Wills’ rebranding through memories of her own childhood as a Black south-Londoner. ‘When I was growing up in Lewisham in London, there were always clothing brands which definitely did not want to align themselves with anyone south-east of the river’, White told inews. 

‘I remember when Jack Wills first launched: it positioned itself very much as a brand that wasn’t for me and my mates. Its obvious obsession with class and money set it apart from so many other brands’. 

Beyond exclusionary marketing tactics, White also recalled experiences of direct micro-aggressions in Jack Wills stores. ‘Staff would invariably make a point of making us feel uncomfortable within seconds of entering. We were university age by that point, so technically their target audience. But not all undergraduates are created equal’. 

Despite casting influencers and content creators, Jack Wills’ new ‘diverse’ image remains as skin deep as before. Clothing on the website only goes up to a size 16 – hardly inclusive in today’s fashion market. 

And besides, gifting young people free holidays and private jet trips (part of the promotional strategy for ‘ITS A VIBE’) isn’t so far removed from Jack Wills’ ‘posh’ history.

Ella Crocket, a student at Newcastle University, was one of a handful of Brits to be flown out on a private jet to the USA. She told the Daily Mail that she was shipped out to Nantucket and told to ‘promote the label among super rich kids’. 

We’ll have to wait and see whether Jack Wills’ rebrand pays off. But it’s hardly reinventing its own wheel of wealth and privilege.