007 is still licenced to shill

Movies have been pushing consumer goods from the days of silent films. Today, product placements is a RM16bil industry in the US alone, according to the consultancy PQ Media.

Everyone knows James Bond prefers his martinis shaken, not stirred, as opposed to whisky or gin tonic. And he drives only certain cars and uses only one watch: Omega.

The watch brand’s ambassador is the character, not the actor who plays him. Hence, Pierce Brosnan, the previous actor to play the secret agent, is no longer used - reports The Star.

“Whoever plays the role of James Bond automatically is used by Omega as one of our ambassadors,” explains David Ponzo of Omega SE Asia.

The James Bond series has long depended on product placements to help pay for production costs, though it overdid it in Die Another Day. There were so many disparate items being hawked it was dubbed Buy Another Day.

To avoid snide remarks this time around, producers Michael Wilson, Barbara Broccoli and EON Productions have drastically reduced their advertisers in Casino Royale to a mere six. They are Sony Electronics, Sony Ericsson, Omega, Heineken, Ford (Aston Martin) and Smirnoff.

Virgin Atlantic and Bollinger are also “associated” with the film.

Brand owners pay for promotion and marketing in return for product placement. There is a shamelessly blatant scene in Casino Royale where the heroine asks James Bond if he is wearing a Rolex: “No, Omega,” comes his reply.

James Bond also uses a Sony Ericsson handphone and a Sony laptop while a memory chip, doubtless produced by Sony Electronics, plays an integral role. This has led purists to wonder if the scriptwriter had to write the story to fit in Sony’s many wondrous products or vice-versa!

Quite a few companies have also jumped on the 007 bandwagon, timing their events to cash in on the hype generated by the latest movie.

On Oct 26, James Bond a.k.a. Daniel Craig flew to Moscow to open Russia’s first Omega boutique at GUM department store on Red Square.

On hand to welcome him were Nick Hayet, president of Swatch Group and Stephen Urquhart, president of Omega, who trumpeted that the only thing the secret agent could really trust was his Omega Seamaster Professional 300m.

On Nov 1, at the Stone Rose Lounge in New York, Delta Airlines launched its New York-London route by roping in not one, but three, ex-Bond Girls: Jane Seymour (Solitaire in Live and Let Die, 1973), Grace Jones (May Day in A View to a Kill, 1985) and Maud Adams (Andrea Anders in The Man with the Golden Gun, 1974 and as Octopussy in Octopussy, 1983).

All this marketing underlines a central tenet of the Bond movies: His has been a fight for freedom and consumerism.

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