What James Bond can teach digital marketers about ‘brand’ and ‘performance’…

The feud between Amazon and the producers of the James Bond franchise is big news in Hollywood and touches on a range of issues from ‘woke’ society to monopolistic platforms driven by ‘performance.’ What interests me, however, is what this feud suggests for digital marketers — more specifically, what digital marketers need to do to get the balance right between (or reconcile?) brand goals and performance targets. Digital marketing and its reliance on data, automation, and conversion can tempt marketers to relegate the brand to ‘consistent messages and look/tone/feel;’ on the flip side, there are still brand marketers who consider their efforts above the ‘cheap’ performance marketing focus on short term targets. The truth is that both disciplines need each other to succeed, and the current Amazon/Bond standoff might offer a clue to how digital marketers need to re-define what “performance” means to their brand and business. Three quick points to consider:

First, the brand, the art, the “feel” (the fun?) part of the story. Chubby Broccoli built the James Bond brand starting in 1962 with Dr. No and Sean Connery’s ‘jungle cat’ movement and dominating on-screen presence. Powerful brands tap into culture (the reptilian brain, imprinting, tribes…and so on) and the Bond brand is now so powerful a pull for audiences that stories about his housekeeper and crime series based on the Q character drive fans to the screen and the bookstore. Bond is a part of our culture (defining masculinity and heroism) as well as a money making entertainment ‘product.’ This world needs to be protected from attempts to commoditize and commercialize — as comprehensively as marketers will do to safeguard against brand ‘violations’ in voice, experience, and recall. That’s how brands fail. So what’s next for the Bond brand? Amazon will yield to the need to guard this franchise’s reputation, lest they lose their hats on this deal…

Second, the data, the science, the “algorithm” (the money?) part of the story. Amazon bought the rights to distribute Bond films in 2021 with the goal of driving ever deeper engagement with audiences — and immense profits from the insight offered from entertainment choices (as much or more than subscription fees and ad dollars). Powerful data-driven platforms can identify trends, uncover new audiences, and even inspire the creative process, and even predict how consumers view brands. Amazon has built a powerful marketing engine on these activities and drives consumer satisfaction across products and now its streaming services! This data-driven world is now delivering value across industries — including entertainment — and has re-set consumer expectations in a way that demands attention. The Bond franchise can’t ignore this reality lest it turn into the equivalent of a medieval castle (that dot the European landscape that Bond drove through in many Bond films) namely, a beautiful but irrelevant anachronism. Is that any way to manage this storied brand? So what’s next for Amazon? Don’t call the Bond movies “content” (c’mon, guys!) and demonstrate a meaningful role in preserving the Bond brand in today’s marketplace.

Third and finally, what about digital marketers and their target audiences? The current marketplace points to the need to deliver both brand and performance — brand experience over time is even more important to today’s consumers, and the average tenure of a B2C CMO is super-short and almost a quarter are out within a year! This tension — seen through the lens of the Bond/Amazon feud — suggests is that it’s worth defending the art of brand building while integrating (aggressively) data-driven insights and digital marketing activations. Script decisions made on ‘feel’ matched with data-driven models that identify new audiences and ways to connect a storied Bond brand should generate fans and profits simultaneously. Distribution decisions based on ‘algorithms’ matched with concerted efforts to maintain “the James Bond story” should ensure orderly expansion of the franchise without losing its unique appeal. The Bond/Amazon story should be a wake up call to digital marketers — we need to re-define what ‘performance’ means, and integrate brand and data into a meaningful narrative and activation plan that builds brands and businesses.