Aston Martin gives you (new) wings

Some, okay many, might argue that Aston Martin has more pressing matters to focus its time, resources and limited funds on than a ‘strategic repositioning to accelerate the brand’s growth’ and a redesign for its iconic winged badge. But it has, and here it is. Well, the new badge at least.

You’ll need to be an Aston Martin spotter to, er, spot the difference, but differences there are, including the removal of the inner hoop and the centre line that splits the wing design. Oh, and the lines have been softened, too. We know, it’s made you want to rush out and order an Aston Martin, hasn’t it?

Well hold on, because while the Formula 1 team will be proudly displaying Aston Martin’s new logo on Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll’s AMR22s at this weekend’s race at Paul Ricard, along with the company’s original button logo from 1922, it won’t appear on customer cars until 2023, when the heavily revised next-generation Vantage, DB11 and DBS are revealed. 

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To coincide with the new logo comes the brand repositioning part, which includes the words ‘intensity’ and ‘driven’. That’s it. There’s a fast-tempo video to accompany it all that’s claimed to convey the feeling of driving all of Aston’s current models, from Vantage to Valkyrie, with ‘sensory data visualisations of pupil dilation and heart rate obtained through biometric testing’. Yes, the agency clearly spent quite some time in the sun coming up with this. 

Anyway, the idea is that this new positioning and branding will attract a younger, more affluent global audience and customer base to Aston Martin, and even the company itself isn’t shy in admitting it could do with a few more customers at the moment. Although it might take more than a marketing film and tagline to woo the young and affluent from their Ferraris and Bentleys. Apple CarPlay would be a good place to start.

There’s a strong whiff of Jaguar’s hilarious/awful 2005 ‘Gorgeous’ pass-the-sick-bucket marketing campaign about this, but while executive chairman Lawrence Stroll may have struggled to turn AM around as quickly as he would have liked, his track record in successfully repositioning and marketing luxury brands is harder to question. Hopefully this isn’t the beginning of another Andy Palmer pre-IPO PR offensive and the return of the Aston Martin submarine. Or the house.