How Aston Martin uses product personalisation in a luxury market

Simon Sproule, Director of Global Marketing Communications, gave us the inside track at the Festival of Marketing.

Desirability by numbers

Aston Martin makes 7,000 cars a year, which is equivalent to Ferrari and enough to meet or nearly meet demand. There’s only one robot in the Aston factory (called James Bonder) and the company is still independent.

In the manufacturer’s 102-year history, it has made 80,000 cars, and 95% of these still exist.

Ultra-exclusive volumes are used for ‘halo’ products, such as the Aston Martin Vulcan.

The differences between the luxury market and the mass market

Sproule set out the differences between Aston Martin and a mass producer such as Nissan, which can make as many cars in a day as Aston does in a year.

Aston Martin’s definition of luxury

With the roll out of Salesforce, Aston Martin has been adding CRM strategy to its definition of ‘Omotenashi’ (the Japanese concept of a unique approach to hospitality).

Content-driven storytelling is designed to build on the heritage of the brand, with ownership and history of individual models adding to their prestige and value.

The James Bond partnership is obviously a key source of brand awareness, with the manufacturer exclusively making 10 units of the DB10 for the new movie, destined never to be sold.

Other partnerships include Gant and InterContinental Hotels.

Storytelling strategy

Simon discussed the need for a ‘Goldilocks’ or ‘just right’ strategy, with the following tenets.

• A focus on the right audience, not the largest audience
• Delivering customers the individual story of their car
• Creating enough distance to create desirability
• Being friendly is okay

If you’re a reader and happen to be an Aston Martin owner (a long shot, I know) do leave a comment and let us know what your personalised service entailed.

This article was originally published on our sister title Econsultancy.com