From AdWeek.  For all of Kim McCullough's childhood memories, two remain especially strong. The first was spending her allowance money on Matchbox cars. The other was watching in awe as her father (an advertising exec at the legendary DDB) pulled into the driveway in a succession of Porsches, Audis and other client rides.  "The love of cars seems to be part of my genetic makeup," McCullough says. "From as early as I can recall, I just thought they were so cool."

McCullough would go on to have a 20-year career in automotive marketing. In September 2014, she was tapped to be the marketing lead for Jaguar, adding to her duties with corporate sibling Land Rover. After all, the U.K. auto brand was the maker of classics like the XK and the E-Type, and sexy newcomers like the XE and the F-Type. James Bond drove a Jag. So did Jackie Stewart and Steve McQueen. In the automotive world, Jaguar is as cool as it gets.

Or it was, at least. "Jaguar had fallen off the radar for a generation of car buyers," McCullough says, "and it was very important to raise the profile." McCullough would accomplish that by starting with marketing she'd inherited, and then building on that.

Seven months before McCullough assumed the vp post, Jaguar had debuted its first Super Bowl ad. Titled "British Villains," the sleek and cinematic spot was a nod to how bad guys of the silver screen always seem to be English, and featured actors Ben Kingsley, Mark Strong and Tom Hiddleston engaged in a magnetic, cheeky patter. The spot not only introduced Jaguar's new F-Type sedan, but added a sinister playfulness to the brand with the tagline: "It's good to be bad."

Putting an ironic twist on a 93-year-old, tradition-bound name like Jaguar was, McCullough recalls, both "a big statement" and "a risky move." But the campaign's ambitiousness turned out to be just the thing. The hashtag #GoodToBeBad became the most used of the game. Partnering with media shop Mindshare, Jaguar was ready for the Web traffic with a war room where its real-time marketing (and not-so-subtle digs at competitors) boosted the brand's media exposure and talk value.

But "British Villains" was more than just a successful Super Bowl commercial. It was "an opening salvo," says McCullough, who found its proven message and playful theme easily adaptable to her own approach.

With McCullough inheriting the campaign, "British Villains" evolved into "British Intelligence," a James Bondian follow-up that included TV spots, online videos and print ads that linked to digital content via the Blippar app for mobile devices. Jaguar began to break free of its stodgy image and feel "more modern," McCullough says. (The addition of 24-year-old British heartthrob Nicholas Hoult wasn't a bad way to do that, either.)

Joe Eberhardt, president and CEO, Jaguar Land Rover North America, credits McCullough for overseeing a marketing strategy that's "cohesive, smart and efficient," while Mindshare's managing director Karen Bennett lauds McCullough for "looking for a balance between the known and the unknown."

In fact, McCullough has been central to differentiating the new Jaguar from the brand that consumers thought they knew—"an expensive, old-man's car with questionable reliability" in the words of Spark44, which created the "British Villains" spot. The Jaguar that Americans saw during the big game was "charming and sophisticated."

Though her hands are full at the moment preparing for the launch of new Jaguar models, McCullough found the time to drive the famous Italian rally Mille Miglia behind the wheel of her own 1954 XK120.

The car, it turns out, is part of McCullough's collection of classics, all parked in a specially built garage at her New Jersey home.

The cars, she says, "are the life-size versions of Matchbox"