| Perhaps Only a small boy training to be
a wizard at the Hogwarts school of magic could cast a spell so powerful as to
create the biggest book launch ever. Wherever in the world the clock
strikes midnight on June 20th, his followers will flock to get their paws on one
of more than 10 million copies of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix".
Bookshops will open in the middle of the night and delivery firms are drafting
in extra staff and bigger trucks. Related toys, games, DVDs and other
merchandise will be everywhere. There will be no escaping
Pottermania. Yet Mr. Potter's world is a curious one, in which things are often not what they appear. While an excitable media (hereby including The Economist, happy to support such a fine example of globalisation) is helping to hype the launch of J. K. Rowling's fifth novel, about the most adventurous thing that the publishers (Scholastic in America and Britain's Bloomsbury in English elsewhere) have organised is a reading by Ms. Rowling in London's Royal Albert Hall, to be broadcast as a live webcast. Hollywood, which owns everything else to do with Harry Potter, says it is doing even less. Incredible as it may seem, the guardians of the brand say that, to protect the Potter franchise, they are trying to maintain a low profile. Well, relatively low. Ms. Rowling signed a contract in 1998 with Warner Brothers, part of AOL Time Warner, giving the studio exclusive film, licensing and merchandising rights in return for what now appears to have been a steal: some $500,000. Warner licenses other firms to produce goods using Harry Potter characters or images, from which Ms. Rowling gets a big enough cut that she is now wealthier than the queen--if you believe Britain's Sunday Times rich list. The process is self-generating: each book sets the stage for a film, which boosts book sales, which lifts sales of Potter products. Globally, the first four Harry Potter books have sold some 200 million copies in 55 languages; the two movies have grossed over $1.8 billion at the box office. This is a stunning success by any measure, especially as Ms. Rowling has long demanded that Harry Potter should not be over-commercialised. In line with her wishes, Warner says it is being extraordinarily careful, at least by Hollywood standards, about what it licenses and to whom. It imposed tough conditions on Coca-Cola, insisting that no Harry Potter images should appear on cans, and is now in the process of making its licensing programme even more restrictive. Coke may soon be considered too mass market to carry the brand at all. The deal with Warner ties much of the merchandising to the films alone. There are no officially sanctioned products relating to "Order of the Phoenix'; nor yet for "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban', the film of the third book, which is due out in June 2004. Warner agrees that Ms. Rowling's creation is a different sort of commercial property, one with long-term potential that could be damaged by a typical Hollywood marketing blitz, says Diane Nelson, the studio's global brand manager for Harry Potter. It is vital, she adds, that with more to come, readers of the books are not alienated. "The evidence from our market research is that enthusiasm for the property by fans is not waning." |