20 Harry Potter: the
The first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published on 30 June 1997, and was instantly bought by US publisher Scholastic.
By Christmas of that year, the buzz had started, and the book had sold 30,000 copies in the UK. This, combined with the publicity generated by the winning of the Smarties Book Award, fuelled further interest from publishers across the globe.
By the time the second book – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – appeared in 1998, the word-of-mouth interest was so strong that it instantly topped the bestseller charts in the UK, knocking John Grisham off the top-spot.
Two more Harry Potter books appeared over the next two years, and then the Warner Brothers movie of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as it is known in the United States) appeared in November 2001. The movie, directed by Chris Columbus, made over $300 million in the United States over two months, and achieved equivalent success worldwide.
Sequels were already being made.
From then on, there has been no stopping the Harry Potter brand. The movies have helped sell the books and the books have helped sell the movies, while both have managed to sell the plethora of spin-off merchandise.
Of course, the rise of Harry Potter has not been free from the odd spell of trouble (no pun intended). Rowling has had the originality of her work thrown into question after a Pennsylvanian author took legal action, claiming that the Potter books plagiarized an earlier book called The Legend of Rah and the Muggles (1984). This book included a character called Larry Potter.
Then, there are those who have considered Harry Potter to be a corrupting influence on children. In October 1999, some parents in the United States grouped together and accused Rowling of depicting ‘sheer evil’. Two years later, there were book burnings in New Mexico where Harry was referred to as ‘the devil’. A preacher based in Maine publicly shredded hundreds of copies of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on the day of its release. A primary school teacher in Georgia was harassed by the anti-Potter brigade, and was told to stop reading pupils the books because of their supernatural content.
And has any of this damaged the Harry Potter brand? Not in the slightest. In truth, it has probably helped, because all these stories have done is add to the Harry Potter hype, and gathered it even more column inches in newspapers.
There is a lesson here for all brands.
The Harry Potter books are narratives. They are stories, with a heavy emphasis on plot. Put simply, a lot happens. However, there is another Harry Potter story, that of the brand itself, a story that started in 1990 when a young woman called Joanne Rowling got stuck on a train (British Rail, rather than the Hogwarts Express) and started to write some ideas down for a children’s story.
Like the Harry Potter books themselves, the story of the brand has a magical quality. It is the story of how a single mother (the central protagonist of this narrative) became one of the highest-earning women in the world, and the initiator of Potter mania. Also, as with Harry Potter, there have been spectacular ups and downs (downs such as the various early rejection letters, and the squab- bles with the church; ups such as movie deals and awards). There has even been a touch of John Grisham, with the ‘Larry Potter’ court case and Warner Brothers’
various legal cases against unofficial Potter sites.
I would argue that the story about the book has now become almost as important as the story within the book, in the making of the Potter brand. This is the lesson of all great brands. They have created their own mythology. Whether it’s Henry Ford saying the customer can have any colour so long as it’s black or Coca-Cola’s Father Christmas adverts of the 1930s, the fact remains the same.
Great brands create great stories. Harley-Davidson, Walt Disney, even Microsoft (super-geek student becomes richest man alive and takes over the planet): these aren’t just successful brands. They are business legends. They include narrative structures most novelists would struggle to create.
Obviously, brand stories aren’t always 100 per cent reality. There has to be some embellishment, some editing out of irrelevant details, even some mytho- logizing. In a way, that’s the brand’s purpose. That’s its raison d’être. To create a legend that people want to buy into, whether it’s hairy Hell’s Angels with Harley- Davidson or five-year-olds with Harry Potter, the same principle applies. By buying a motorcycle or visiting Disneyland or reading JK Rowling, consumers aren’t just making a choice based on the cheapest price or convenience. They are buying into a story and – in doing so – becoming part of the brand story itself.
Indeed, great brands are great stories. And while JK Rowling may nearly have finished the Harry Potter series, the story of the Harry Potter brand still has many chapters to come.
Secrets of success
l Story-telling. Harry Potter, along with Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, is one of the most popular narratives of all time. It is an escapist fantasy that has almost universal appeal. However, the publicity and marketing machines at Warner Brothers and the various publishers of the book have been working on a different story – the rise and rise of the Harry Potter phenomenon itself.
l Groundwork. In 1997, JK Rowling was relentless in promoting the books and toured various independent and children’s bookstores across the UK to spread the word.
l Crossover appeal. When JK Rowling first started to write Harry Potter, she envisioned it as a children’s story. Quite quickly, though, it became clear that adults in touch with their inner child were also taking pleasure from the books. ‘A friend saw a man on a train reading a copy behind his newspaper,’
observed Rowling. ‘And at signings adults are happy to admit that it’s for themselves.’ The publishers have successfully capitalized on this broad appeal by producing adult covers to avoid any embarrassment while people read the books on public transport.
l Omnipresence. Harry Potter has now joined the super-league of omnipresent brands. In 1997 the only way you encountered the brand was by walking into a bookstore. Now, it is everywhere – in cinemas, supermarkets, toy shops, newspapers, sweet shops, video stores. You can read the book, watch the film, play the computer (or board) game, buy the action figures, eat the sweets or even buy the T-shirt.
Fact f ile
Web site: www.jkrowling.com Founded: 1997
Country of origin: UK
Brand fact 1: JK Rowling’s Web site attracted 220 million visits in an eight week period.
Brand fact 2: Seventeen thousand questions from all over the world were submitted to JK Rowling, during her hour-long Web chat for World Book Day.
Brand fact 3:Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix became the fastest selling book of all time when it was published in hardback on June 21st 2003, and sold 1,777,541 copies in one day in the UK.