Licensed to make a killing - advertising execs assess Bond`s appeal
13-Nov-2006 • Bond News
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Adam Morgan
Founder, eatbigfish brand consultancy
There are three reasons for the Bond brand's continuing success: first, there's an underlying consumer need which Bond is fulfilling that is partly about Britain. In Bond we still have the best car in the world, even though we don't actually have a car industry; we lead the world in technology, even if in real life we definitely don't; we have the best looking man in the world and all foreign women just fall at his feet. Our need for that just gets bigger; it is growing, rather than diminishing. The crappier Britain becomes, the more we need Bond.
Second, a successful brand deals in really potent currencies: sex, money, power and death. That's what Bond is all about: by buying into the brand, we're buying into this currency.
Third, the Bond brand remains successful because it is always being refreshed. In many ways the people you should speak to are my twin boys: they have just bought the Bond video game of From Russia with Love, which is an old Bond movie. One of the reasons that Bond remains such a strong brand is that it is a contained world: that's one of the reasons that Bond sees off its competitors. So long as they keep refreshing the brand, Bond will have eternal appeal.
Michael Gubbins
Editor, Screen International and screendaily.com
The big thing about this Bond is its product placement, which is clunky to put it mildly. And to go with that, seven companies have massive tie-ins with Casino Royale - Ford, Heineken, Omega, Smirnoff, Sony Electronics, Sony Ericsson, and Virgin. All of those have got their own Bond-related adverts and product placements. It is quite a clever arrangement. Heineken is quite interesting because Bond doesn't drink Heineken, but they've done their advertising and online campaigns based around the film with actor Eva Green in person and with Bond and so on.
Most movies now go through so much fragmentation with YouTube and MySpace and all those things but Bond has done the opposite and gone right upmarket by having massive tie-ins with several global brands. So you get this spiralling-out advertising that you can't really avoid. Because one of those products you will come across one way or another, and each one of them is pushing James Bond and that can go down to the tiniest, crappiest beer mat in your local pub and right up to some high-end Omega watch campaign. That is a the way that a lot of these big blockbuster movies are moving now. Casino Royale is just one the smarter ones at doing it.
Mark Borkowski
Founder, Borkowski PR
What is powerful about the Bond brand is that Eon [the production company that makes the films], Barbara Broccoli et al, have always kept a strict eye and control over the brand. They have been great custodians of it and if anything the brand increases. They've managed to maintain the glamour, they have always had very clear ideas of partners.
There are always brands willing to pay large sums of money just to get some reflective glory. The danger is that the Bond brand could be damaged by being associated. But Eon hasn't exactly gone to town getting every last big brand involved with the film.
Eon is pretty good at knowing the volume of hype they have to put into it if they got something that isn't a great film. Word of mouth on this very strong so you can see the cranking up of the volume. The Bond brand doesn't need YouTube or MySpace because it permeates down. The Bond cult is enormous and that shows the brand is bigger than many of the more modern ways of reaching an audience. But there is still huge net activity going on around the film.
Andy Hobsbawm
European chairman, Agency.com
The idea of product placement is on the rise because it is a way of stitching the brand into worlds that people interact with. I've seen the Bond trailers on YouTube and there is a Sony product placement, which reminded me of Mike Myers in the first Wayne's World movie. That is always going to be uncool. Any time that you feel the commercialism is intruding on the narrative isn't sensible.
When the producers say they are "rebooting the franchise" it's clearly an attempt to anchor the Bond brand in the digital age. He seems to represent in media terms some of the old-fashionedness of a media that is trying desperately to keep up with this new interactive age. On the other hand, there is no reason what you couldn't make the franchise relevant as there isn't anything in James Bond himself that means you couldn't contemporise it.
Also before 9/11 you may have thought that technology was all-powerful and technology was replacing the all-action hero because it could do everything. But post 9/11, the idea of human intelligence versus technical intelligence has come to the fore and you need real people on the ground getting sweaty and dirty with the action. And bad guys do attack us with low-tech weapons. I wonder whether the gadgets in Bond were getting more and more ludicrous and now this "reboot" might be slightly more in tune with the times.
Piers Schmidt
Co-founder, 4th Room brand strategists
From a consumer's perspective, or this instance the viewer's, I became slightly **** off with the franchise over the past few years over the product placement, which had become almost too overt. There was a seminal moment with the shift from the Aston Martin to the BMW - I thought, "****, the spies' car has been put up for auction."
With the cars, the gadgets, the watch brands, you can see the direct links with them and the Bond brand. But if it's product placements for not a particularly sexy beer brand, you start to think that it was only there because it was paid for. And I think that does start to dilute the integrity of the brand. And if that happens Eon will have less to sell in the future.
The Bond brand is almost the only one that Britain has left. We sold off our manufacturing capabilities, we don't make motorcars really any more, we don't have an airline that rules in the way we used to be proud of BA for doing, so in a way James Bond is the last British export.
Thanks to `overkill` for the alert.
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