Aston Martin cooler than an iPhone
Luxury car maker overtakes rival to become UK’s coolest brand
Aston Martin has regained the title of the UK’s coolest brand from iPhone, according to the annual CoolBrands survey.
The Warwickshire-based car maker was top of the poll in 2008, but lost out to the iPhone last year. The survey has run since 2001 and the results are based on a public vote and a panel of 35 designers, style magazine editors and web executives.
CoolBrands put Aston’s success down to the brand’s “power, beauty and soul”.
The car marker won despite its most famous customer James Bond having shown some questionable brand loyalty in recent years, being seen in a Ford and a BMW. It is also interesting that ‘non-green’ automotive brands can still be seen as cool, with Mini and Harley Davidson also doing well in the poll.
The full top ten is:
1. Aston Martin
2. iPhone
3. iPod
4. BlackBerry
5. Bang & Olufsen
6. Harley Davidson
7. Nintendo Wii
8. Google
9. Ferrari
10. Dom Perignon
In 2009, the Apple brand itself was number three, with the iPod number four, but this year Apple fell drastically to 13th – perhaps suffering from the faulty antenna issue on the iPhone 4. BlackBerry rose three places to number four.
Harley Davidson at to number six. The Nintendo Wii remained the UK’s coolest console at number seven (down two places from last year). Google was a non-mover at number eight.
The only really big mover aside from Apple’s slide was Harley Davidson, although the iPlayer did well too, moving from 20th in 2009 to number eleven.
The judging process involves an assessment of some 10,000 brands, which are then further whittled down to 500 ‘CoolBrands’, from where the ultimate top 20 is compiled.
According to Stephen Cheliotis, Chief Executive of The Centre for Board Analysis and Chairman of the CoolBrands Council: “Aston Martin’s sleek, polished and sexy cars ensure the brand continues to dominate the list of the nation’s coolest brands, as judged by experts and consumers alike. Traditional favourites continue to challenge new, cutting edge brands.”
Aston Martin CEO, Dr Ulrich Bez commented: “Once you can define precisely why a brand is cool, then it no longer has the magic that earns it that label. There has to be an element of mystique, something that eludes definition. In order for a brand to have that quality, it needs people behind it with a passionate, creative vision who care for and nurture it.”
The past decade has seen Aston Martin transformed from a small-scale manufacturer of specialist sports cars to an international force in both road and racing cars.
Since 2000 it has launched seminal Aston Martin models, the DB9, V8 Vantage and DBS, all constructed at the company’s factory at Gaydon in Warwickshire. A dedicated Design Studio was added to the production complex in 2007, housing a creative team led by Aston Martin’s Director of Design, Marek Reichman.