James Bond is back, and companies such as Omega watches, Gillette shavers and Belvedere vodka have paid undisclosed sums for product tie-ins with Spectre in sponsorships that one marketing specialist says are cinema’s version of the Olympics.

Being a sponsor allows companies to show Bond-themed adverts, as both Gillette and Heineken are doing, or to mount lavish drinks parties – featuring Belvedere martinis.

Jacques de Cock, a marketing consultant and lecturer at the London School of Marketing, said the half-century-old Bond franchise is cinema’s marketing equivalent of the Olympics.

We’re all just kind of gobsmacked about the whole thing

“The marketing and co-marketing of the Olympics is close in terms of branding – in terms of revenue, no,” de Cock said. He estimates Bond movies have earned some £11 billion – in 2015 prices – at the box office, and another $4-5 billion from marketing since Dr. No in 1962.

He said the marketing and promotional activities associated with a modern Bond movie could run to £150-200 million, or roughly the cost of making it.

“I looked at Star Wars, I looked at Harry Potter, they actually make more per movie, but they are only seven or eight movies long in terms of franchises. It’s the longevity and depth combined that make Bond unique,” he said.

But not everyone who benefits pays to be seen in, or associated with, Bond. The green dress and hexagonal earrings that Lea Seydoux wears to an intimate dinner with Daniel Craig’s Bond on a luxury train have been plastered on billboards and buses across London – without anyone paying for sponsorship.

“We’re all just kind of gobsmacked about the whole thing,” said a delighted Sameera Azeem, head designer for British-based Ghost, which produced the £225 slinky Salma dress that the French actress Seydoux wears to the dinner that ends abruptly when a would-be assassin pounces on Bond.