Daniel Craig will always be James Bond in Heineken tie-up campaign

James Bond is changing with the times, and so is the way Heineken is using him in marketing. The brewer—which has rankled some Bond purists with previous product placement deals that had Bond swapping a Heineken for his standard martini—is taking it a step further this year. It's plugging its non-alcoholic Heineken 0.0 as part of a campaign tied to the April release of “No Time To Die,” which some observers are pegging as the “wokest Bond film yet.” No, Bond is not swearing off booze. But he is apparently experimenting with moderation, which is quite a change for a character so associated with cocktails that a 2018 study from The Medical Journal of Australia, called “License to Swill,” diagnosed the character with “severe alcohol use disorder.” The campaign by Publicis Italy includes one 15-second teaser spot that shows Daniel Craig’s Bond passing on an elaborately garnished “Double O” martini because, as he says, “I’m working.” Another longer form spot shows Craig playing himself in real life, but dealing with people, like a female cab driver, who think he is Bond. That ad, released today, features regular Heineken and feeds into the notion that Craig, appearing in his last Bond movie, “will always be James Bond in the eyes of fans around the world.” Bruno Bertelli, global chief creative officer at Publicis, tells Ad Age's Creativity: "The idea was originally inspired by Craig's comments a few years ago on how he didn't want to be Bond any more. So, we tried to play off the Daniel Craig versus James Bond angle, the public versus private persona. Plus we wanted to bring some light-heartedness to the James Bond story, in line with Heineken's brand values about not taking life too seriously." Read more about the campaign over at AdAge.com. Contributing: Alexandra Jardine

Daniel Craig will always be James Bond in Heineken tie-up campaign

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