When It Comes to Brand Distinctiveness, Nobody Does It Better

I saw a trailer for this great-looking film the other day, but I can’t quite remember the name… It was about this character, perhaps you’ve heard of him? He was British. Smartly dressed. Wore a tuxedo to the casino. Drove a sports car. Liked to drink Martinis and insisted on them being shaken not stirred. Anyway… the name completely escapes me. Any idea who it might be? 

It’s not a very convincing act, is it? Of course, I know who this character is. I know that you know who he is. And we both know that pretty much anyone who’s had access to a cinema screen or a TV in their life can recognize him from the sprinkling of details I just gave you. So much so, in fact, that you can change the actor playing this character, change his face, his physique, his accent and even his personality, and these characteristics will still make him instantly recognizable as James Bond. 

It’s been said that you can identify the best movie characters by the shadow they cast on a wall. Bond takes this to the next level. Not only is his silhouette recognizable; it’s so recognizable, it forms the basis of cinema’s most famous title sequence. And this is no happy accident. The character of Bond has been carefully kitted out, Q-style, with a package of finely engineered characteristics that ensure this is the case. That’s why you could sit a tuxedo on the back of an empty chair, rest a filled Martini glass on it, deliver a line from off-stage in a theatre, and everyone would still know which character they were listening to. Bond is a strutting monument to distinctiveness that any brand marketer should learn from. 

You Know My Name 

The first lesson is one that distinctiveness matters – because there’s no mistaking it, Bond is definitely an operative for the Ehrenberg-Bass school of brand marketing.  

in his ground-breaking book How Brands Grow, Professor Byron Sharp of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute argues that the most important characteristic of a successful brand is having distinctive brand assets that are easy for people to recognize. Sharp argues that marketers should be focused on measuring and growing these distinctive assets rather than fretting about the minutiae of how they’re positioned, or whether they are different enough from their competitors. Professor Mark Ritson, who spends a lot of time debating with Sharp – but also a lot of time agreeing with him, sums this up by saying that the most important thing as a brand marketer is that your audience knows it’s your brand that’s speaking to them. 

This goes against many of our instincts as marketers – and human beings. We tend to believe that brands succeed by being different; by having unique, ground-breaking propositions, occupying their own space in the market, or owning an idea that nobody has ever thought of before. We want originality to be rewarded – and we would love to believe that audiences carefully compare the characteristics of different brands before deciding which one best aligns with them.  

With its emphasis on always trying to break new ground, you might call it a heroic view of brand marketing – but it’s not the strategy that cinema’s longest-running action hero has been following. 

It’s a surprising truth that none of the assets that make James Bond distinctive are remarkable or ground-breaking in themselves. All of them were features of famous film characters before Sean Connery first introduced himself as Bond over a signature game of vingt-et-un in Doctor No. A sharply dressed Cary Grant drove a flashy sports car and flirted with Eva Marie Saint over cocktails in North By Northwest. Humphrey Bogart had the tuxedo, the casino and, at key moments, the champagne cocktails in Casablanca.  

Author Ian Fleming and film producer Albert R. Broccoli didn’t feel the need to invent a whole series of quirky features or points of personality to make sure their character stood out. Instead, they picked characteristics that were a perfect fit for Bond, would go naturally together, and would make sense in the minds of the audience. They were characteristics that Bond could own because they were characteristics that fitted the role he plays. And over time, that’s exactly what happened. 

When a Line’s Delivered Well, It Doesn’t Matter if You’ve Heard It Before 

Decisiveness is the key ingredient when choosing distinctive brand characteristics. I’m often reminded of this when thinking about famous taglines – an element of brand marketing that gets far less attention than logos and other visual codes but is a vital part of distinctiveness nonetheless. Think of the taglines that you can recite and recognize without thinking and you’ll be struck by how few of them are inherently original. “Every little helps” is hardly a ground-breaking idea. “Just do it” has been shouted at personal training clients for generations. “I’m lovin’ it” is hardly a bold, new claim. And yet all of these are great, memorable and distinctive taglines because they fit perfectly with the brands associated with them – and because those brands have committed to putting in years of work to make sure people recognize as much. 

One of my favorite shouldn’t-be-distinctive-but-really-is taglines is for Domestos. “Kills all known germs. Dead” is pretty much the definition of what bleach does. There’s no way any particular brand of bleach should be able to own that claim for itself. And yet, that’s exactly what Domestos has done. It’s taken an obvious idea, expressed it in a way that’s just memorable enough to be distinctive (that last word after the full stop is crucial, isn’t it?), and then invested in building that distinctiveness with clarity and commitment that ensures success. 

Well-Rounded Characters Have More Than One Feature

Of course, a movie character’s distinctive features don’t exist in isolation. James Bond isn’t just the tuxedo or the martini. He’s both those things, plus the cars, the hedonistic attitude, and the gambling habit. It’s the combination of these characteristics that make him distinctive.  

That’s how it is with brand codes as well. It’s the careful and consistent association of a combination of characteristics that lead to a kind of shared ownership. McDonald’s doesn’t just have the ‘I’m lovin’ it’ tagline. It owns the association of that idea with the already established golden arches and, crucially, with the signature audio sign-off originally performed for the brand by Justin Timberlake. These three things are now inseparable in the minds of consumers worldwide.  

McDonald’s is one of a range of modern pioneers of audio branding, alongside the likes of Intel and Shell. Once again though, 007 is a few steps ahead – or about 27 steps to be precise. He’s not only the most visually distinctive character in film history. He’s also by far the most sonically branded, and he’s become more so with every film. 

The technical term for a short piece of music associated with a particular character is the leitmotif. Bond’s had one ever since the opening, gun-barrel title sequence of Dr. No. Like, the character itself though, the Bond theme has kept acquiring ownable characteristics. Almost every film has extended and re-imagined the sound of Bond, adding new themes for particular kinds of action sequences, borrowing from the show-stopping opening numbers by famous performers, building up a veritable sound library. The result is that Bond doesn’t just own one tune. He owns an entire musical atmosphere. 

Ruthless Consistency – Branding’s Real License to Thrill

McDonald’s distinct brand assets got that way through a rigid and ruthless consistency that James Bond himself would understand – and which the Bond film producers and directors certainly do. They made sure that Bond doesn’t just do the tuxedo, martini, fast car thing… he always does these things. Bond has either ordered or been offered a shaken-not-stirred Martini in every film since 1962. He’s worn a tux in every official Bond film with the exception of Live and Let Die (it was set in New Orleans – it’s a bit warm for formal dress down there). These brand characteristics are an essential part of the brief for every Bond film because his distinctiveness depends on them always being there. 

Consistency takes years of self-control – and it can lead to plenty of tensions between marketers and creative agencies who want to play with brand codes, adapt visual cues and evolve taglines to make more sense in different contexts. But as Mark Ritson points out, it’s the long-term legwork of being rigidly consistent that puts a brand in the driving seat on distinctiveness. And it’s only when you’ve put in this legwork that you’re able to play with your distinctiveness and use it as a creative asset. 

Where Distinctiveness Meets Emotion – The Magic of Movies and Marketing

The reason that both iconic characters and iconic brands have such power isn’t just that they always look and sound the same. At various points in their history, they’ve managed to associate their distinct features with powerful, emotive and influential memories in the minds of their audiences. It’s this magical ingredient that makes us care about those distinctive brand elements in the first place. And that’s where creative marketing really comes into its own. 

There’s no better example of this than Coca-Cola. It’s distinctive not just because of the red color, the beautiful, flowing font and the trademark bottle shape. It’s distinctive because brilliant advertising and marketing have succeeded in associating these assets with blockbuster moments of emotion. From teaching the world to sing amid the social tensions of 1971 to the irresistible power-ballad ads of the 1980s that I grew up with, Coca-Cola has excelled in emotive brand advertising that gives its distinctiveness meaning in people’s minds. But the brand has an eye for an emotive opportunity that goes back much further than that. It may be a myth that Coca-Cola redesigned Santa Claus in its signature red and white – but the reason that myth exists is the adept way that the brand has associated itself with the season of good cheer since the early 1930s. These are the brand equivalents of the jaw-dropping opening sequences in Bond films that recharge the feeling of ‘wow’ associated with tuxedos, martinis and sports cars. 

Great film characters are a package of distinct characteristics that are associated with powerful emotive memories. That’s why they mean so much to audiences. Great brands are the same. We may not consciously pay money to go and watch them in action, but we’re more than happy to pay to have them as part of our lives. James Bond will always return – and thanks to the power of brand distinctiveness, so will we.