’Shaken, not stirred’: Branding James Bond

As Skyfall , the latest film in the Bond saga premiers this week, King's Finola Kerrigan and colleague Daragh O'Reilly (University of Sheffield) argue that brand is no longer a singular entity, but is in fact the product of collaboration between the brands with which it interacts. In a lecture this evening entitled 'Branding James Bond', at the Museum of Brands in Notting Hill, Kerrigan and O'Reilly will discuss the success of the James Bond brand and demonstrate how numerous brands co-exist within individual films. The Bond films have a long history of brand inclusion and have seen the secret agent with everything from Sony phones to Rolex watches. The most recent addition, Heineken beer, is rumoured to have paid £28m to replace the renowned 'Shaken, not stirred' vodka martini, demonstrating the value of association with the franchise. Kerrigan, a Senior Lecturer from Department of Management at King's, specialises in marketing within the arts industry. She aims to use the Bond franchise to illustrate how multiple brands come together to form the overall brand of the film and how, in turn, the film influences how the individual brands are perceived. In the lecture the Bond brand will be used to illustrate the importance of brand consistency over many decades and will explain how elements of the films are altered to correlate with social changes, whilst maintaining the brand's identity.