Andy Palmer, CEO at Aston Martin

Interviewd by Vincent Abrams

What plans do you have to grow the brand going forward?

To some extent it is covered in the practical execution of the six year Second Century plan.

First of all let’s put it on to three pillar/ legs of a stool and a plate on top.

The frst pillar is the sports cars. Renew the exciting range of luxury sports cars which means renew the DB9 with DB11 but also the Vantage and the Vanquish.

So that’s the frst thing that we do. Our attention is to come back to a sales volume continuously capped at 7,000 units per year, which I believe we can do since we have done that in the past.

It is just a question of keeping the product fresh. The second pillar is then adding what we call the DBX which is a new segment, it is an evolving segment in the luxury arena and basically competes with the luxury SUVs something like the Bentley Bentayga.

But what is important it that we don’t simply make an SUV. Our brand ethos is ‘Power, Beauty and Soul’, so we have to develop a beautiful crossover. For us it is a crossover between a GT sports tourer and a SUV. And we have to imagine here what that might be.

The third leg of the stool is the revival of the Lagonda brand which is the competitor to the likes of Rolls Royce and Bentley but done in its own way. We try therefore to revive the spirit of the Lagonda brand which is the fnest of fast cars.

On top of that if you see the seat of the stool, is that every year we will bring two small series products to market.

This year we did the Aston Martin Vantage GT12 and the Vulcan. Next year we will do another two.

If you think about the future, the future is that you have 7,000 sports car, plus we have DBX, plus we have Lagonda. We are no longer the very small hundreds per year.

I-MAGAZINE focuses on business and politics and brings them together. In what ways can business affect politics to see through global and local change in a way you would be happy with?

Well, businesses generally speaking don’t like playing politics and I guess the other ways may also be true. But they are unavoidable and obviously business and politics undoubtedly link hands at some moments.

Let me give you an example. We need, as a result of bringing DBX to market, we need extra factory capacity,- because our current facility isn’t capable of sustaining the volumes that we need in the future.

The obvious way would be to build extra capacity here. But that’s unaffordable for us because we haven’t got enough space.

So you get into the discussion of where should we build that factory capacity.

Given that we are potentially in collaboration with Daimler utilizing one of their vehicles which is built in America, you have got this diffcult discussion about do you built the car in America, or in the UK or in a place where there is a very willing Government to help bankroll the venture.

That is where business and politics obviously cross. Because through the experience of looking for sites for DBX, 19 different countries and states knocked on our door asking why don’t you built your new car here.

These are the merits, both fscal and non-fscal that go along with that and then you go into the discussion not only about this is the money but the importance to the UK, or the importance to Alabama, or the importance to Wales, whereabouts you place the factory.

The good news is that everyone wants Aston Martin in their country.

How important is social media to the modern business?

It is increasingly vital. It comes not through the evolvement of business but because of the change of the customer. As you start to sell cars in China, you reach to a generation that - for example their decision making is driven by pear group opinion and not through believing a corporate on an advertising.

Pure TV advertising for example becomes less meaningful because nobody believes it whereas a like on Facebook or retweet on Twitter is a validation or an advocation of a brand and therefore it is taken much more seriously.

As that millennial generation come through and starts to become part of our buying public in the future, then how you address those people? Then you obviously address those people through social media.

It becomes more and more important. To that end, I am also a Tweeter, I like Twitter, I use it and I won’t let my PR people anywhere near my Twitter account. For me, it crosses two fusions between personal and business.

But I think it puts a kind of human side on both Aston Martin and me because everything I tweet is my own.

For all the same reasons we talked about social media. Traditional above the line advertising becomes instantly an important part of the business.

It is not going away but it becomes not compulsive by itself. Certainly as I was growing up, if ITV put an advert on the television, and it was a bit funny and it stood out, then there was a really good chance that you would be infuenced to buying it, because we believed what was on TV.

We become more cynical over a period of time and therefore viral is much more important to us. How do you reach the viral environment? It is PR. So PR is vital. It is so vital that I combined Marketing & PR when I came to Aston Martin to putting it under one division called Marcomms. That division reports directly to me rather than through the Sales function which traditionally would have been done in a car company.

I don’t have much spare time to be honest. I regret to say that I am a workaholic. But anyway, I love the car business so what I get up to in my spare time is probably somewhere associated either with the car business or somehow rather with my family.

But even if this is time with the family, it probably involves cars. I would probably be driving my classic car around (1981 V8 Vantage) or driving my motorbike around.

I have a BMW K1600, which I like to ride when I can. It doesn’t get used that much.

If not, I am probably ferrying the kids around somewhere or try to spend some time with the family in general.

And if there is any time left on the top of that, then I read. I like to read history, so historical events, either in historical format or in historical novel format as long as the history is broadly speaking correct then I enjoy when I have the opportunitynormally on an airplane. I like to sit down with a pair of air plugs on and listen to some Punk Rock - which is my youth - and read a book.

I think I would describe myself as an engineer and therefore to some extend logical fact driven looking at history somehow to plot the future.

I am maths and engineering based and I am a great believer that you should root yourself in the mathematics but when you execute you need to be creative.

I am not the most creative person in the world but I’d like to think that I can come up some times with things from an odd angle. And I can sometimes come up with some crazy ideas that appear to work.

I am neither the most rational engineer nor the most creative creator in the world but somehow try to be a blend of both. What is important is that you have people around you that represent both sides of the spectrum and whilst sometimes a real nerdy engineer or a real wild creative can be hard to manage, as part of my management style, I try to let those people coexist within my management team and embrace the diversity.

What do you think the fundamentals of leadership are?

There is a big difference between management and leadership. I think leadership is about that. It is basically not asking people to do things that you would not be prepared to do yourself.

When we go through painful restructure, for example, don’t ask people to say things you are not prepared to say yourself. That’s why I didn’t inspire to the fact that I didn’t like it when we started the restructuring program.

I stood up in front of everybody and announced it- even though I would have been much more comfortable if had sat in my offce and ordered someone else to do it. I think leadership is about leading from the front. And of course, you need the vision, you need the strategy.

The analogy I would make is that of Wellington at Waterloo. I love historical novels. Napoleon was a great strategist- may be one of the best. He played chess amazingly and had amazing success on the battlefeld as a result. But when it came to Waterloo it was an event fght.

Frankly speaking it could have gone either way. He based himself at the back of the battlefeld and he essentially moved the pawns into position. So you could argue that he was strategizing and he was sending the orders and had an overview of the battle and he moved the pieces around. Wellington probably should have lost because he was late to get into position and Waterloo wasn’t necessarily the place of his choosing for the battle.

Some moments without the help of the Persians, the Belgiums and the Dutch he probably would not have won. But the reality is that what probably gave him the fnal advantage is when he had people on various fronts, right at the age of losing, he personally went to the front and stood by them alongside and took the risk. So many times, you are in the battle of basically dyeing on the front line.

Because he put himself into danger, he made himself vulnerable and lead from the front. For me, one of the icons of historical leadership is actually the way that Wellington performed his duty at the battle of Waterloo

I told you what I aspire to. I work maybe too hard. I am a workaholic but I hope this is true that basically I lead from the front and try and work harder than anybody else. Hopefully strategize above anybody else. I am not the highest IQ person in the building but hopefully I compensate with hard work.

What is your favorite piece of art – or the one piece you would love to have on your wall or at home?

I like art - which is functional. My idea of a job in my retirement is making watches and clocks. I love the art of the transmission. I am a transmission engineer originally so I love looking at mechanisms. In terms of my favorite piece of art at home, of course it is my Vantage V8. In terms of a piece I’d like to have on my wall at home, it will have to be a DB5 or maybe a DB4 GT but it will have to be something to do with automotive.

Who are your political (if applicable) business role models?

Business leaders would be people like Damien - I have a great admiration for what he did for quality after the war. I have a great admiration for Mr Honda for example and Mr Suzuki in the more present day.

I am not a great follower of one political party or the other. I am not a political person. I don’t hang my colors to any particular party. But if I look back in history, my greatest admiration goes to somebody like Sir Winston Churchill who put together a rather fabulous strategy in adversity and demonstrated huge leadership capabilities through a really diffcult period.