Even F1 Teams trust in performance, and attribute only where possible

The Marketing Society membership gives you access to some pretty amazing stuff – connections, content, knowledge, but especially some top-level events.  I was privileged to attend a recent ‘Connections and Conversations’ event hosted by the Aston Martin Formula 1 team.  The day was full of valuable thoughts and insight, but there was one snippet that stood out amongst everything – and without realising it, F1 Driver and Aston Martin team member Pedro De La Rosa had provided a perfect analogy to link Formula 1 performance to brand and performance marketing.

We were sat in a room with the centre piece being an actual Aston Martin F1 car (it was pretty cool).  During his presentation Pedro was talking about the fact that there were 13,000 parts in this car – and each one had a very precise job to do in delivering optimal performance.  There’s no wastage or excess; this machine is built for one purpose – to go as fast as possible around a track and get over the finish line in one piece.

He talked about the core of the car, the engine and all of the parts that sit beneath the outer shell – that place where the power really sits.  All of these parts are designed and manufactured to the highest of high standards and they get thoroughly tested in advance of being placed within the car.  But, what he said next really stood out for me.   Once they have been developed and tested for the season, what sits under the shell doesn’t really get touched again – unless there is a problem.  There is a trust and belief that those parts that really drive the performance are the best they can be.

The place for testing and improving performance comes from the outer shell and how that ultimately affects air resistance.  Every single part of the outside of the car goes through rigorous testing and measurement to understand what contribution that part makes to overall performance.  I had to double check this with Pedro in a chat whilst we ate our lunch, but he confirmed - they replace and test individual components one by one and put it through the wind tunnel to measure performance.  And when they say they are looking for improvements – they are looking at fractions of a millimetre on a part, to see if that improves (or negatively affects) performance by fractions of a second.  Performance can be attributed precisely to each part.  And by the end of an F1 season, the whole of the outside of the car could be different to the one that started it.

So how is this an appropriate analogy to Marketing?  Well, the engine, power and the core of the car is our brand and our long-term activity – and the outer shell our performance marketing activity.

You know with absolute certainty that the engine and internal parts are central to overall performance.  It takes up a large part of the budget, but there isn’t a need to find specific and ongoing performance amounts to attribute to that part of the car.  You’re not going to find the team principles questioning the value of the engine – unlike the equivalents in our businesses who question the value of brand activity.  Our brands are the base for our performance – sure they need maintenance and protection, but get them in place and allow them to do their job…..and they will.

But, where you can measure and attribute performance – then you do that to the absolute extreme.  Where small incremental improvements across thousands of pieces can add up to a large overall improvement.  This is where we can really demonstrate the power of test and learn in our performance marketing, where a relentless focus on small improvements, to multiple campaigns, across a period of time can have an accumulative effect – and enable the brand (engine) to deliver even more.

The two have to work in harmony together - you can’t have one without the other. And by measuring and improving the parts which you can – it will not just improve that part, but it will allow the whole to achieve even greater levels of performance.

I know we as marketers are constantly battling the issue of long and short, and trying in some instances to really persuade others the need to invest in brand, and that it can’t really be measured.  Aston Martin F1 team were a great example of the whole business, trusting, knowing, believing in the core and then working as hard as they can on the parts they can incrementally measure, to give that engine the chance to perform at the best of its capability.

I specialise in marketing Once or Twice businesses, those businesses whose customers are only ever likely to purchase their product perhaps Once or Twice in a lifetime.  For these businesses it is essential to have the long-term brand building to be considered and the perfect short-term activation and performance marketing to convert the customer in that one moment they are in market.  Thanks The Marketing Society and Aston Martin F1 for a great day and giving me some inspiration and analogy that I can use to perhaps persuade some non-marketers of the need to consider brand and performance.

Authored by Mark Hull, Member of The Marketing Society 

Published 27 February 2025