I helped shape McLaren's brand. Here's what worries me about the refresh

Creative Boom: I helped shape McLaren's brand. Here's what worries me about the refresh The reaction to McLaren's new identity has been loud and largely negative. Having spent two years as its head of brand, I don't think the objections are really about a logo. Image courtesy of McLaren Image courtesy of McLaren In 1970 the Rolling Stones were apparently booed off stage. The crime? They played Brown Sugar. The crowd had never heard the song (it wouldn't be released until the following year) and they were there for the established hits. Whether the story is apocryphal or not, I was reminded of it last week by the reaction to McLaren's rebrand.

The reaction has been considerable, subjective and largely negative. Ironic when McLaren is somewhat defined by its refusal to stand still. A business that has spent more than sixty years making things better, faster, lighter and more efficient, often by taking something already extraordinary and finding a way to reimagine it as something better still. And yet here they are, in the midst of a social media pile-on over a change to their visual ID. When Jaguar had their moment, I thought it fairer to wait a year before offering judgement. I hadn't been in the room. McLaren is different.

I spent two years as Global Head of Brand and was involved in the new identity before leaving at the end of 2025. I have to be careful about what I say, and wouldn't want to second-guess those now responsible for it. But I can discuss the publicly released work and its compatibility with the particular kind of brand I believe McLaren is. A familiar kind of luxury The new identity features a revised wordmark, expanded colour palette and a visual system shared across Racing and Automotive. The familiar Papaya, Speedmark and kiwi (both speedy and 'fat') remain, alongside a refined heritage shield.

The wordmark is inherited from the family garage in New Zealand, including its distinctive underlined C. It resembles a cedilla, a typographic mark that changes the pronunciation of a letter. Here it serves no such function. An appealing history, although the contemporary expression is rather more familiar. Scroll through the Instagram films and social content, and you encounter the established vocabulary of luxury. Restrained typography, immaculate art direction, carefully controlled colour and the studied visual repertoire that has served fashion and hospitality for decades. One viral post called it the Chanel-ification of McLaren.

The internet has also made much of the apparent similarities to Marriott Bonvoy and the unrelated construction company McLaren, none of which is particularly helpful to a business apparently reaching for distinctiveness. A racing team that made road cars For me, McLaren has always been a brand defined by its acts and deeds. Its reputation was established by the races it won, the cars it built and the extraordinary lengths its engineers pursued in search of marginal gains. There is something fundamental about the direction in which McLaren's culture developed.

This was a racing team that decided to make a road car, rather than a road car manufacturer wondering what it might take to go racing. For people arriving from Ford, JLR or other volume manufacturers, I imagine it can be a difficult culture to understand. Conventional product development begins with the customer, market opportunity and a proposition around which a vehicle can be designed and sold. McLaren's approach is different. In Woking it's decided what the car should be capable of, what the driver should experience, and then the engineers go to work. The commercial proposition emerges from the result of those efforts (hopefully).

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The article discusses a significant rebranding effort of a well-known brand in the automotive industry, raising important concerns about brand identity and community engagement, which are critical topics for brand strategy professionals.