They’re paying him because he embodies a fictional character, invented fifty years ago by a now-dead author.

I must admit I’m not a big fan of the whole James Bond thang that some Omega owners have going on. Despite also reading quite a lot of Seth’s work, including “All Marketers are Liars” I’m not a big fan of his either.

This time for sure he has missed the mark, focusing on one endorsement without seeing the overall strategy and also missing what, imho, is a big factor behind the success of it Pierce Brosnan himself.

If I may be so bold as to copy and paste from a post I did over at TZ-UK.

Real branding is nothing to do with being able to recognise individual products as “belonging” to a group, it has nothing to do with logos nor slogans. When a product has reached brand status it is because it invokes an emotion, a feeling within people. Some people then connect with that brand because the “feeling” they get from it matches their world view.

Now imho Omega have that in spades, on top of that they also have product channels that focus in on specific concepts. Look at the Speedmaster range, the moon watch et al, that nails totally a broad swath of people with the whole first watch on the moon/nasa stuff. Look at the Seamaster range, the James Bond angle connects with a lot of people too. Personally I find it a little cheesy but we need to look beyond that and look at the whole range of “celebs” that Omega uses.

Think about it, its not about the products its about the emotion they make people feel.

In Omega’s case lets join the dots, NASA, Astronauts, James Bond, Michael Schumacher etc etc. Its real simple, wear an Omega and like those guys you will be successful, modest and above all cool, calm and collected.

One things for sure, Omega are telling a great story and I believe have the products to back it up.
Surely Seth ain’t just a Rolex guy with a grudge? 😉

Via what can only be described as the excellent, stupendous, must read wristfashion.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 12th, 2005 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.