Sunday night's Mad Men may have explicitly linked Jaguar to the shady, salacious business of kept women and even outright prostitution, but as they say in advertising, "There's no such thing as bad publicity, even if it makes your brand seem like the sole province of wealthy assholes." In fact, in an interview with AdAge regarding the company's portrayal, JaguarUSA's David Pryor says that it was "gratifying" to see the luxury car featured so prominently on the show, though he did say that they were "fairly surprised at the turn of events"—a plot twist about which they didn't receive so much as a heads up. Not that Jaguar would have objected, necessarily: "Obviously it was kind of tainted … with the storyline," Pryor allowed, but he added, "At the end of the day, though, we're confident that people know it's a fictional character," rather than believing that all Jaguar executives are sleazy, hirsute bears demanding to paw at the most voluptuous employees of prospective ad agencies in return for giving them their business, when that probably almost never happens
In fact, Pryor sees it all as a big win for the brand, considering Mad Men's fictional campaign ties into their real-life advertising's direction, saying, "They were building on this emotional connection, this love, this lust that people had for the brand back then and that we're trying to recreate now." And if you happen to make a similar connection between owning a Jaguar and being so rich you can afford to essentially buy women, no matter how repulsive you may be, then it's really no different than the message the luxury car industry has been putting out there for decades, right?