KAREN SORTITO Agent of Change

Brandweek, Oct 12, 1998 by T.L. Stanley

Bond had been offered the Aston Martin or a Jaguar. Either of the cars would have suited his cover-a well-to-do, rather adventurous young man with a taste for the good, the fast things of life ... Bond smiled cheerfully to himself. He picked up the telephone and ordered himself a delicious, wasteful breakfast, a carton of king-size Chesterfields and the newspapers.

Ian Fleming's Goldfinger

For detractors of the $100 million cross-promotional campaign around the eighteenth Bond film-and they were legion-Karen Sortito might call their attention to the origin of the property, the books themselves, which she read voraciously and consulted for guidance on what exactly was and was not appropriate, brand-wise, for the world's master spy. It is impossible to know if frequent brand name-dropper Ian Fleming would have approved of one of Sortito's ideas that never made it to fruition, but the creators of last holiday's hit Tomorrow Never Dies drew the line at this pitch: How about a link with lingerie giant Victoria's Secret for a diamond-studded, nerve gas-spewing 007-branded bra?

"I thought it was campy," said Sortito, MGM's evp-worldwide promotions and corporate sponsorships, who still gets a good laugh when she thinks about the raised eyebrows she got at that meeting. "The filmmakers thought it was crass."

The point, Sortito said, was to get noticed, a notion that always begs the question, How much is too much? Though it's asked often in Hollywood film promotional circles, especially post-Godzilla, no campaign ever stoked the fire of controversy or elicited the cries of overkill like that around Tomorrow Never Dies, which forged global links with Smirnoff, Visa, Ericsson cell phones, L'Oreal, Heineken, Omega watches, Avis and, for the second Bond film in a row, BMW Television ads from Visa introduced the movie, and the familiar Bond theme music, which all partners had to license for their campaigns, became the soundtrack for a fourth-quarter TV and radio blitz. The movie's release date was hammered home in every partner ad, per their contract with the studio.

Though the joint effort seared star Pierce Brosnan's face into the popular consciousness even beyond the level of Goldeneye's hype, studio veterans decried it all, claiming it was so overdone it could cause a backlash with other potential corporate partners and ruin their chances to create lucrative alliances for high-profile film projects. Scrutiny was so intense that scores of consumer publications that normally don't write about the machinations of movie tie-ins weighed in with biting commentary about Tomorrow's extensive product placement and back-end promotional deals "License to Shill" was a popular headline. Even after nearly a decade in the take-no-prisoners promotions business, the indefatigable Sortito said she was not prepared for the critical onslaught.

"I was shell-shocked," she said, obviously still feeling the sting nearly a year later. "I couldn't believe a marketing effort would propel as much debate as it did."

When the film opened, day and date with Titanic, movie-goers responded by making Tomorrow the fastest-grossing Bond film in the history of the 35-year-old franchise. It earned $207 million in its first 17 days of worldwide release, out-grossing combined box office receipts of the first 16 Bond movies (excluding the 17th, 1995's Goldeneye). Tomorrow went on to gross $125 million domestically, besting Goldeneye by nearly $20 million, and $345 million worldwide.

The box office dollars spoke volumes, lifting the hit-hungry studio's spirits, but did not end the soul-searching. In hindsight, MGM execs still think the approach was the right one, and yet they won't repeat it. Sortito plans to have fewer partnerships the next time around, though nearly all the Tomorrow partners have expressed interest in reupping. Sortito already is pitching Bond 19, project title for the Nov. 19, 1999 release, with an eye toward restraint, for which at least one potential repeat partner is grateful.

"The temptation is to get too many partners producing too wide a variety of work," said Jim McDowell, BMW's marketing vp. "It's just the reality of movie tieins today. But we're all better off with fewer partners producing richer work so the burnout is not there."

As for his post-mortem on the omnipresence of the Tomorrow campaign: "It wasn't a brush with death," he said, "it was a near brush."

Was Tomorrow Never Dies, and by extension, its suave hero, overexposed by the myraid media and marketing campaigns from its sponsors? But did the collective drum-beating help make the movie a success? Many in the promotional world and outside it would say yes to both questions, pointing up a central irony: that the campaign was both vilified and embraced. Saliently, it created a new term in the promotional lexicon. Clients of all sizes and budgets soon were giving promotions agencies the mandate, "I want a Bond kind of deal," and were immediately understood. And so were the ones told, "I don't want a Bond kind of deal," by marketers wary of even the suggestion of overcommercialization.