Harry Potter and the Great Big Hoopla

By Michelle Chihara, AlterNet. Posted June 16, 2003.

This week a tsunami of marketing and merchandise will wash over bookstores, billboards, baseball stadiums and every possible form of media -- a tsunami by the name of Harry Potter.

On June 21, at 12:01am, the much-anticipated fifth book in J.K. Rowling's immensely popular series goes on sale. And when it does, its cover will be beamed from a billboard in Times Square while Harry Potter lookalikes hand out a million stickers and badges. The international jet set will attend a $500,000 release party in London. And all this for a book -- not for a movie, nor for anything having to do with J-Lo. But of course, Harry Potter is officially no longer simply a character in a book. He is a one-boy, multi-million dollar, international brand and media property.

The book itself has been kept under tight security, held under a strict embargo until the moment of release. Reviewers don't get copies; bookstores face harsh penalties if they disobey. The boxes of the precious tomes have been arriving at stores sealed in opaque black plastic wrap, labeled with a 1-800 number to call if the seal has been broken.

Reportedly only five people in the world have read the story, plus maybe one fork lift operator in the UK who found a couple of copies that fell off a truck. Evidently he offered pages to The Sun newspaper for £25,000. He was promptly nabbed and sentenced to 180 hours community service. That incident seems to be the lone breach. Headmaster Dumbledore would be proud. Heck, the Department of Homeland Security must be green with envy.

The tight security comes from orders on high; the author herself supposedly wanted to make sure no one spoiled the surprise for her young readers. Of course, the tactic is also a brilliant marketing ploy, like creating a line outside a club. The suspense is building. What will it matter what the critics say, once the tension breaks and everyone is awash in all things Potter?

A Critic-Proof Potion

Critics? Does anyone really read book reviews anymore? Certainly as far as sales are concerned, it may not matter much at all what's between the covers of this fifth Potter installment. The book has already turned the publishing world on its head and entered a mass market that books rarely reach. The usual book world sales tactics simply don't apply. Rowling is more famous than any other author who could possibly write her a cover blurb, and it seems safe to assume that most Harry Potter fans don't give a damn what the New York Review of Books has to say about Hogwarts. As long as Rowling hands us some reasonable facsimile of the previous four books -- Harry must be endearing, Hermione clever and Voldemort evil and defeated -- the record 8.5 million copies printed in the first run will probably find homes. Orders on Amazon.com have already topped a million. Brand loyalty is high.

No matter what goes on inside Potter's delightful world, out here in the land of the dollar, Harry Potter the brand is en route to ever more massive "mindshare," as they say. The question is, what does brand loyalty do to the imagination? Are mass market brands and creative storylines really compatible? The millions of dollars being spent on Potter marketing and merchandise are intended to create loyalty to a happy symbol of magic and innocence. Will that enormous financial pressure jibe with character development? Any criticism of the Harry Potter phenomenon is inevitably dismissed as cranky or snobbish. "At least they're reading," goes the comeback, and it's true. But what they're reading still matters, and a brand is by definition reductive and oversimplified, a single note, while a character is a melody, complex and multilayered. It would be a shame if the real world pressure to sell Cokes were to creep into Harry Potter's world, if the pressure to be a brand kept Harry from taking risks as a character.

The proof will be between the covers of "The Order of the Phoenix." Within the world of Hogwarts and without, Harry Potter is facing challenges at least as serious as his evil nemesis. First of all, as a character, the boy with floppy bangs is facing adolescence. This is no easy task for any boy, never mind a boy with a mean, unloving family and a magical school, never mind a boy whose basic approach to the world is pretty naive. More on that later. But first, as a brand, Potter may be facing what they call overexposure.

A Household Name

Executives at Warner Bros, which is gearing up for the next Harry Potter movie, don't sound worried. Diane Nelson, senior vice-president of marketing, has been quoted in the London Observer saying that Harry Potter "is a bigger property than anything else we at Warner Bros have seen." From Britain to the US to Germany to China, Harry Potter has become a household name. "It's astonishing," Nelson says smugly, "and we're nowhere near saturation point. The appetite is not a trend; it is a real evergreen property."

Millions of dollars are being wagered on the strength of that property. The publisher has already reportedly distributed some three million bumper stickers, 400,000 buttons, 50,000 window displays and 24,000 stand-up posters with countdown clocks. There are fridge magnets, magic wands and lightning-bolt temporary tattoos. The $3 or $4 million marketing campaign (which doubles the amount spent on the last campaign) includes Harry Potter Days at baseball stadiums nationwide, with scoreboard promotions and costume contests. Bookstores around the globe are being decorated to look like Diagon Alley with owl cages and spider webs, for midnight parties. After the premiere party, Rowling will be participating in a live webcast, a la Madonna, in which 4,000 children in Royal Albert Hall in London will ask questions (what will they do to get attention in the back?). The broadcast is being sponsored by Microsoft and British Telecom, which are investing $2.5 million in the production. Millions upon millions of viewers are expected to log on for a record-breaking web event.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »