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My agency is heavily involved with Mercedes digital, and we recently got shortlisted for an award at the Digitals for our C-Class app. I wanted to do something similar for Aston Martin, a brand which has fallen behind in the digital race, to celebrate their 100th year in business.

On first thought, you might picture the typical Aston Martin customer as a rich, elderly country gent who doesn’t even know what an iPad is, let alone own one. Surprisingly, Aston Martin’s main target demographic is a lot younger and more tech savvy (wealthy men in their late 30s - early 40s). This aligns perfectly with that of the iPad (35 - 44 age group, middle-class, well-to-do). Moreover, there is also a high percentage of older iPad users (8% of iPad users are 65+), so this app caters for Aston’s elderly country gents, too.

Despite this, ‘app’ is a dirty word for Aston Martin, a brand which revolves around heritage and the romance of a bygone (pre-digital) era. The challenge, therefore, was to make an app which felt nothing like an app. Instead, it had to feel like one of the traditional, handheld catalogues which Aston Martin customers were used to. The result had to be an app design which pulled Aston Martin into the modern world, whilst retaining the brand’s sense of elegance and history.