Harry Potter doesn't even need Muggle marketing

Posted Jul 18th 2007 5:50PM by Barry Summerlin
Filed under: Consumer Experience, Marketing and Advertising, Books

Boarding a train into Manhattan on Monday night, I found myself in a seat (rare in itself) across from an Oxford-wearing twenty-something engrossed in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth tale in the series, released just last week in theaters. Aside from checking the stops occasionally, he never looked up from his book.

Shortly later I transferred trains; a woman, maybe 50, sat down across from me. She too pulled out a book -- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Potter's third book.

Potter's ubiquity reminds this Muggle of critic Chuck Klosterman's notes on the death of Johnny Carson and the popular notion that there could never be another Carson, who in his day had such a wide and total grasp on the nation. Klosterman argued that of course there could be another Carson, except that through the fragmenting and stratification of popular culture -- augured by the niche channels of cable television, taken to extremes by the internet -- we have instead chosen to retreat into cultural cliques, limiting common experience to -- what? Devastating acts of terror, I guess.

As I recall, Outkast's massive 2003 hit song "Hey Ya!" was the closest thing Klosterman could propose as a unifying cultural force (not without his reservations), but he might have overlooked J.K. Rowling's little wizard. Who since maybe The Beatles has met this sort of worldwide fanfare with each new offering? Publisher Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL) is delivering a record-breaking first-print run of 12 million U.S. copies to meet demand -- that's a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for every ninth household.

Last month, Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) sought to contrive that sort of worldwide experience by continuously playing Paul McCartney's new album Memory Almost Full -- released on Starbucks' Hear Music imprint, naturally -- in its 10,000 coffee shops. Bully for Sir Macca, but ask your local barista how she felt after listening to the same 42-minute album end-over-end for eight hours.

Marketing also played a heavy hand as The Sopranos wound up last month, but at least the broad anticipation of Tony's fate was genuine (although remember, HBO marketed the show as a phenomenon even before the first episode aired). But more remarkable and organic is Harry Potter fans' grueling wait to learn the wizard's fate when the series' last chapter is released Saturday.

BloggingStocks' Jonathan Berr went out of his way last week to declare his Potter-free lifestyle, a move which echoed the defiant cries several years back from recidivist graduate students and high-nosed cultural commissars who pooh-poohed Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and all manner of reality television, sight unseen. And while like Jonathan (if I can project on him for a second), I also regard manias with a cynic's suspicion, Rowling has earned her credit. Harry Potter took off because the books (running upward of 700 pages long!) kept kids up all night reading by flashlight under their covers, not because of Harry Potter Hallowe'en costumes and buzzing Nimbus 2000 toy broomsticks or any over-the-top marketing on Scholastic's part.

When so much of the culture is base, fleeting and derivative, prepared and preened by marketing research committees, rare sleeper success stories like that of Rowling and Potter -- when word of mouth and genuine enthusiasm leave Madison Avenue unnecessary -- are to say the least, magical.

More Harry Potter news

Tom Barlow: The Harry Potter Finance Quiz
Gary E. Sattler: New York Times bestseller list leaves Harry Potter out
Tom Barlow: Harry Potter ending: A water cooler cheat sheet
Zac Bissonnette: With Harry Potter done, is it time for Scholastic to sell itself?
Tom Barlow: Rowling safeguards Potter empire
Zac Bissonnette: Is the last book the end of Potter mania?
Tom Barlow: Harry Potter and the Pots of Gold
Julie Tilsner: Not even Harry can save bookstores from their fate
Peter Cohan: Harry Potter and the Pot of Gold
Tom Barlow: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Will Rowling kill off Harry?

Gallery: Everybody loves Harry Potter