Selling Bond To New Audience
The James Bond series is the longest running and most successful franchise in movie history and MGM owns it. The 18 Bond movies have grossed more than $7 billion worldwide for the studio since 1963.
For the latest 007 flick, The World Is Not Enough, MGM is pulling out all the marketing stops to carry Bond into the new millennium. CBS MarketWatch Stacey Tisdale tells The Saturday Early Show how and why.
British superagent James Bond lives on in The World Is Not Enough, which hits theaters Nov. 19, with Pierce Brosnan trying to carry 007 into the 21st century.
Bond came of age with the baby-boom generation in the early 1950s, a world of martinis and tuxedos.
The 18 Bond movies have grossed the studio more than $7 billion worldwide since 1963. But generating a big box office in the 21st century is going to depend on a younger audience: generations X and Y.
The trouble is their image of a 1960s British spy is more Austin Powers than James Bond, a serious problem for MGM. To sell The World Is Not Enough to 34-year-olds, MGM teamed up with the world's No. 1 purveyor of youth culture: MTV.
Analysts are calling it the biggest global marketing effort in history.
It includes 100 hours of programming on MTV stations around the globe and a giveaway on Total Request Live, the highest rated show on MTV.
MGM also signed on the red-hot band Garbage to do the theme song for The World Is Not Enough, in its effort to attract younger viewers.
"If you were to only rely on the fans from yesterday, then eventually the market would diminish, and I think it's imperative to the revitalization of the franchise and to continue to capture a new audience of young moviegoers and new Bond fans," says Gerry Rich, vice president of worldwide marketing for MGM.
"The MTV viewer looks to the network for a lot of lifestyle trends, including entertainment trends. So I think that this would be the equivalent of the Good Housekeeping seal of approval for young movie fans," Rich adds.
We'll find out if this multimillion dollar marketing effort paid off next week when we see the box office tallies from The World Is Not Enough.
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