How product placement shapes James Bond
Seeing your favorite secret agent drink a Heineken instead of a martini might seem strange, but it’s part of a trend that has been with Bond since the very beginning.
For as long as James Bond has existed, he has been a perfect agent for brands to advertise their products. Bond’s charm, sophistication and prowess (both physical and sexual) are shown as aspirational and have kept the character relevant to audiences and advertisers for the past five decades.
Ian Fleming’s original fourteen novels and nine short stories all reference real world products and brands with Gordon’s Gin, Smirnoff Vodka, Bentley motorcars, Taittinger champagne and Rolex watches name-checked throughout the pages. These brands help the reader flesh out the world Fleming created to be more believable. When accused of including brand names for the purpose of receiving compensation, Fleming responded by saying “My books are spattered with branded products of one sort of another as I think it is stupid to invent names for products which are household words”. The only time any company sent anything to Fleming in response to being included in his books was Floris, who sent him some soap.
“He could not just wear a watch. It had to be a Rolex” — Ian Fleming, Casino Royale, 1953
While Fleming’s hyper-specific descriptions can date his books (Not that his casual homophobia and sexism didn’t already), they are ultimately successful shorthands for Bond’s character and environment. The reader is aware of the prestige associated with brands like Rolex so we associate that prestige with Bond himself and when Bond was translated from page to screen, these shorthands for luxury and sophistication continued. EON Productions were always aware that Bond was a valuable asset not only to Queen and Country, but to their bottom line. Producers Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli and Harry Saltzman frequently allowed companies to use characters and actors from Bond films to sell products. Clothing brand Burton, Vicks Cough formula and Simoniz car wax were among the not-so-glamorous brands that utilized Bond, his likeness or the greater cast of characters to sell.
As the films progressed, the arrangements made between production and brands evolved. Product placement is a type of advertising that integrates a product into a production with the goal of increasing awareness and sales, and it’s a practice almost as old as film itself. Howard Hugh’s 1927 epic Wings was one of cinema’s first blockbusters and it included a glory shot of a Hershey’s candy bar. Showing a product on screen is known as product exposure and hearing the product talked about is verbal exposure. Both types of placement were common in Bond films from the very beginning as in 1962s Dr No, we see shots of Red Stripe Beer and hear references to Pan Am, Smith & Wesson and Dom Perignon.
Product and verbal exposures are effective ways of increasing brand awareness as a reported 85% of people notice product placement and 57% of people end up buying a product they saw on screen. So tone down boasts of how perceptive you are at noticing product placement. It’s not meant to be subtle, that’s the point. Every car badge, phone brand and drink label has been positioned to be noticed.
Yet with exposure comes risk. As these placements are meant to be noticed, their appearances are never natural and sometimes a well-intentioned placement deal can create a jarring moment. It’s very natural to see Bond driving his Aston Martin but it’s rather off-putting to see him in a Ford Mondeo in Casino Royale. Seeing Moneypenny shave Bond with a badger brush the size of an actual badger in Skyfall seems suited for the suave spy, unlike when he used a Phillips electric razor in Die Another Day.
In return for having their products appear on screen, brands will assist the production in numerous ways. Sometimes it’s just a simple transaction of cash (called an integration fee) or it’s a little more involved. Loaning products for shooting can make production much easier, such as when Perrier provided trucks full of cans for Bond to drive a tank through in Goldeneye, or when Ford provided 125 cars plus international transportation across the globe during filming of Casino Royale.
For Goldeneye, BMW paid an integration fee of $75 million and provided the yet unreleased Z3 for the production to use. However this wasn’t without its drawbacks. Special effect supervisor Chris Corbould said in a 1999 interview with The Guardian that “They (BMW) were so paranoid about keeping it (the yet unreleased Z3) under wraps, we weren’t actually allowed to do much to it. If you look at Goldeneye, it doesn’t actually do very much”. However despite not doing very much, the placement was a success as the Z3 sold out in its first production year upon release.
Yet Bond’s deep garage of vehicles doesn’t always guarantee a profit for brands loaning their cars. Aston Martin have gone on record saying that there is little financial incentive to appearing in Bond films as their appearances don’t raise the average amount of cars sold per year. Yet they continue to partner with the franchise as it fosters the brand image of Aston Martin being a desirable luxury car.
The most impactful form of product placement in recent years is cross-promotional marketing. Rather than a straight swap of cash or lending the production your things, brands now promote the film in their own marketing. During the promotion of Casino Royale, Keith Snelgrove, then Senior VP of Global Business Strategy at EON said ““We don’t like one-time product placement deals. Our partnerships are very successful and our partners always come back. EON accepts very, very little straight cash. Our real goal is to ensure we have a huge opening weekend so we’re looking for cross-promotional advertising dollars”. This is why you’ll see far less James Bond branded toys and games, and far more appearances of actors in commercials for products like Heineken and Sony.
In recent years, the Bond films have been criticized for their increased use of product placement with Daniel Craig’s appearance in commercial as the fictional spy held up as proof that things aren’t how they used to be. In some respects, they are right. A slickly made and humorous commercial for a Dutch beer was never the norm during Connery’s era. Back then his likeness was being used on dolls, jigsaws puzzles, lunch boxes and race tracks which had much more integrity.
Filmmaking is an intersection between business and art and with the increasing costs of films, money has to be found somewhere. Even Daniel Craig, the Bond actor most vocally critical about these films has said that “We (EON Productions) have relationships with a number of companies so that we can make this movie. The simple fact is that, without them, we couldn’t do it. It’s unfortunate but that’s how it is. This movie costs a lot of money to make, it costs as nearly as much again if not more to promote it, so we go where we can”.
