Hitting the accelerator: Insight at Aston Martin

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If you had to choose one fictional character who best encapsulates 20th-century, old-school British ‘glamour’, you would be hard pressed to think of an alternative to James Bond. He had the clothes, the martini, the lifestyle and, arguably most importantly, the car. That car was most often an Aston Martin.

Since its founding more than a century ago, Aston Martin has become a byword for British luxury, a premier sports car often seen in ‘racing green’. In the years since, it has kept its allure, even adding a Formula 1 team in the process.

Yet, it is an interesting time in the luxury market, and a difficult one for the car industry. On the one hand, the market is evolving as a new generation comes on to the scene, and there are increased opportunities for brands in the digital world. For cars, environmental concerns have resulted in their lustre fading, with the looming ban on petrol engines in 2030 presenting a challenge for sports cars to electrify while retaining their appeal among horsepower enthusiasts.

There is also a shift in emphasis in the luxury market, from owning beautiful and high-quality items towards something more experiential, bespoke and exclusive, according to Carlee Hardaker, head of global customer insight and customer experience strategy at Aston Martin. “It is much more about living life. People want individuality, customisation, and to share stuff on social media and portray an image of a lifestyle.

“Luxury, historically, has been a badge you wear – it signifies wealth and status. That’s not the case any more; it is more about ‘look where I can go, look who I can be with’. Luxury is more of an expression of your personality rather than just your status. Audiences connect with brands that represent how they want to live their life – it is not just about buying a product, it is about buying a lifestyle.”

To discover more about the attitudes and behaviours of modern luxury buyers, Aston Martin teamed up with 7th Sense for a research project (see boxout, ‘Richer data’) involving events held with high-net-worth individuals. The results have fed into Aston Martin’s brand positioning and advertising, with its recently launched ‘super tourer’ DB12 an attempt to combine performance and luxury more in keeping with the focus on experiences identified in the research programme. The research found that a new generation of customers wanted more from a luxury brand than just a premium product, such as experiences and bespoke items. This also means the brand is focusing more on sports, especially the F1 team.

The biggest impact of the research might be a focus on experiential opportunities for customers, according to Hardaker, with the findings underlining the importance of experiences and relationships with premium brands to a new generation of high-net-worth individuals.

“Audiences are forever changing. I wouldn’t say it is a revolution, but I think the audience is evolving,” says Hardaker. “What we see as a business is that it is not just a generational shift – it is a mindset that spreads across generations. People from the age of 20 up to 80 buy our cars, and they all have a shared set of values, attitudes and behaviours, no matter what their age or demographic.

“Our customers want access – what they want is behind-the-scenes, sustainability, shared sets of values. They want time and freedom. As a company, it is really important to stay close to our customers. After all, the purchase of an Aston Martin is a very emotional decision – there are elements of rationality in it, but it is an emotional purchase.

“If we are tapping into the emotions of our customers, it is important to understand who those drivers are, and how we position ourselves as a brand to be relevant to new customers coming through.”

This also means investing in the digital experience – both in terms of existing channels like the website and social media, and also considering emerging spaces like the metaverse.

“It is important to have digital tools to take away the mundane and make it simple and convenient, and add the level of immersion new customers are looking for,” Hardaker explains, but adds: “It still remains vital to have the physical experience, as well as that digital experience.”

To address this and build a rapport with customers and gather insight, Hardaker’s team has run experiential events to introduce select groups of customers to new products, giving them a behind-the-scenes experience with as-yet-unreleased cars or prototypes, and then collecting feedback. This is done mostly through qualitative research, but with a dollop of quantitative for good measure.

The team has spent a lot of time talking to the people who attend these events and use a customer satisfaction programme to understand every stage of the customer journey, says Hardaker. This programme uses a range of data sources, including the business’ customer relationship management database, information from its dealer network, and social media, with help from artificial intelligence and data tools.

While the customer is “at the heart of the business”, Hardaker says the company has focused on letting technical experts innovate in ways that could appeal to future consumers, taking a similar approach to creativity as the likes of Apple.

“A customer doesn’t always know what they want until they see it, particularly with luxury products – some of the inspiration comes from within,” she explains. “It is not necessarily about testing things with our customers to see if they’ll like it or asking them what they want, but using our customers as inspiration for what we develop by getting to know them in a more emotional way. Then we let the designers and engineers create.”

While all Aston Martins are produced at the company’s headquarters in Warwickshire, it is important to ensure it has a more global, rather than UK-focused, vision “in terms of who our customers are, the products we make and how we take those products to market”.

The insights team at Aston Martin sits within the marketing and commercial function, incorporating customer insights and experience strategy, data science and analytics, and regional product planners and insight specialists focused on getting information about competitors, markets and consumers from different regions. There is also a small innovation team.

“Even when we are talking about events, it is always fed into a central ‘pot’ to make sure we have a global voice of the customer,” Hardaker adds. “We are very customer-centric in our approach. There is a lot of support at very high levels for understanding what our customers think, getting feedback from everything we are doing and defining who our customer is. Insight comes from so many different parts of the business.”

The team carries out brand health monitoring, regular updates for the board and executive team, and calls with regional teams. There is a focus on working with smaller agencies, as a means to get a closer, more tailored relationship.

“It is important for any agency you work with to really feel part of the brand, to really know your products, as that’s how you get the best insight,” Hardaker says. “A lot of it is about understanding the luxury market, how to talk to and engage these people, and understanding what we want to get out of it, as a brand. We are much more inclined to use the smaller agencies that are more engaged with the brand.”

With regards to new trends, there is a need to determine what fits the Aston Martin brand, and what is a passing fashion. “I don’t think you ever get to your end goal if you keep changing direction within the latest fad that is coming along,” Hardaker says.

“Fundamentally, are our customers really interested in it? It is important to look at it in the wider landscape of what our customers want.”

Plugging in

The big challenge for Aston Martin, and the wider automotive industry, is electrification and the growing need for a more sustainable, greener world. In the UK, petrol cars are being phased out, with an end to new production by 2030. Numerous other nations have adopted similar policies of varying timescales in the past few years. With the climate emergency increasingly high on the political and public agenda, car makers have had to grapple with the shift to electric and hybrid vehicles while retaining a more petrol-centric core audience. Aston Martin is adapting to the new realities of electric cars, but Hardaker says those changes do not necessarily mean a change in brand image.

“You still maintain the brand DNA – in some ways, whatever powers the car is irrelevant,” she explains. “It is about what the brand stands for, how it feels and what it says about you. An Aston Martin is never about getting from A to B. It is not all about sound – it is about all the sensory elements.

“Our new brand positioning is about sensorial supercharge, and making sure the driving experience is consistent with Aston Martin, no matter what the propulsion of the engine or battery is.”

Hardaker is referring to the company’s new brand positioning, adopted in 2022 and accompanied by a global marketing campaign aimed at new audiences, which the 7th Sense research fed into.

The company has a sustainability programme called Racing Green, in tribute to the traditional colour of its cars. It aims to make the company’s products more environmentally friendly, as well as invest in people and promote the UK, with a board sustainability committee overseeing the programme’s success. In 2024, Aston Martin will start delivery of the Valhalla, its first plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, with a fully electrified sports car and SUV portfolio planned for release by 2030.

Like most luxury goods, however, Aston Martins do not fit easily into the mainstream disposable culture. “We still know where more than 95% of our cars are – you can’t get much more sustainable than that,” Hardaker says.
“This is not a throwaway culture; this is something that stays around for life. There is an inherent level of sustainability in buying luxury goods, and the second-hand market as well.

“No business ever stands still – there are always new things coming. The challenge is staying on top of all those trends and picking out which are just fads.”

While James Bonds come and go, the hope is that the Aston Martin will remain. The challenge is keeping it on the right track.