Okay, so this post was supposed to go up 9 years ago... Whoops! It's still a good read, though, I promise!
So what's my problem with Skyfall? Well it's not my problem, but it might be one for the film's stakeholders. There's something wrong with their marketing, or more specifically, their bus banner adverts.
On first look, visually I actually love what they've done! As you can probably tell from my own site, I'm a fan of black/white designs and the use of contrast. The striking simplicity and positioning of the logo is especially well done. That said, on closer inspection of the film's bus ads, which at the moment are inescapable, there seems to be something missing–content!
Nowadays bus ads provide agencies a great opportunity to be creative because of the awkward shape of the allocated banner area. Placing actors/characters in the vertical space has become popular. This was especially noticed recently with the release of The Dark Knight Rises.
The agency for Christopher Nolan's final Batman film used 3 versions of their bus ad, each displaying a different character in the allotted space with a very clean look for the rest. This included an easily legible font for the title and an absence of any other images (other than the background) or text any where near it. Something else was missing from these versions, the actor's credits. These were Batman (Christian Bale), Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) and Tom Hardy (Bane) and can be seen below:
At the time I had to question why they would do this with secondary characters, but in the end I resigned myself to the idea that most viewers would automatically recognise the image of Catwoman, and associate her with the Batman franchise. In Bane's case this is less true, but he's still a character with a following as well as distinguishing villainous characteristics such as his mask, that help explain who he is.
So how is this related to Skyfall? Well, a very similar approach has been used here, and that's no surprise since attempting to imitate techniques used on the successful(?) campaign of the biggest film of the year is probably a good idea! Bond's new bus posters have a very clean, simple look. One actor, a background image and the title, which is off to the left with a small amount of info. Just the release date and the standard requirements. Again though, the names of the actors are missing on each of the three versions.
So what's the difference? Well, I'm having to Google their names now for one (which actually might be planned to draw people online but I'm not sure...). Daniel Craig is recognised by the standard Bond tuxedo not to mention his appearance in the two previous movies (Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace). The other two are random characters we know nothing about as actors, or more importantly, as characters in the film.
Unlike Bane or the infamous Catwoman, they aren't wearing unusual costumes and they aren't household names in either respect. So what we're left with is two pretty posters displaying the word "Skyfall", "007" and two people, who for all we know could be the local supermarket checkout girl and one of her regular shoppers, zooming around London (and everywhere else) on almost every bus in sight... From this poster we know nothing about them or about the film except that it's the next Bond film and those people may or may not be starring in it.
Will this have a huge impact on ticket sales? Perhaps not, but you have to laugh really, I mean where's Dame Judi Dench/M's bloody poster? because of the lack of information on these banners the agency were forced to revert to identifying "the bad guy" as the one in the black coat (hat...). The woman, as it turns out, is Naomie Harris playing Moneypenny, which no one would have guessed without foreknowledge.
Is it good that advertisers are producing different versions of adverts? Yes, it has some great applications, doing so for Avengers Assemble could have been amazing! I expect they will do something like that with the next film now that they have established the characters as a team. In the case of James Bond's Skyfall, though, it just wasn't needed. One poster with either Daniel Craig and the others on it, or better yet just him, would have sufficed.
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