Harry Potter’s PR magic: How J.K. Rowling, Scholastic and independent booksellers are maximizing Potter’s success

July 19, 2007

Copyright © 2007 PRSA. All rights reserved.

By Chris Cobb

This article will appear in the August issue of PR Tactics.

The success of the Harry Potter book series is unprecedented.

In barely 10 years, the adventures of J.K. Rowling’s boy wizard have captivated millions of readers across the globe and promise to have a shelf life and status comparable to those of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Alice in Wonderland and other classic heroes of youth literature.

Harry’s numbers are staggering.

When Rowling’s first novel, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” was published by Scholastic Books in 1998, the initial print run was 50,000 copies — healthy, but not extravagant for an author’s first book.

With six books in the series completed, Scholastic planned a 12-million first run of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the final book in the series, released July 21, at 12:01 a.m. (According to reports, "Deathly Hallows" sold more than 8 million copies in the United States during first 24 hours after its release.) In the time since the series began, 325 million Harry Potter books have been sold in more than 60 languages throughout 200 countries. The “Sorcerer’s Stone,” which began with a modest print run, has now sold 28 million copies and counting.

Touring with Rowling
Nobody anticipated the scale of the Potter phenomenon when Scholastic’s Kris Moran, director of publicity on the Potter series since book one, was shepherding J.K. Rowling on her first U.S. publicity tour.

It was October 1998, a year after the first Potter book was published in the United Kingdom. Moran took Rowling to New York, Chicago, Seattle, Denver and San Francisco to meet booksellers and sign books. The book signings were hardly arduous, especially in Seattle where only five people came. Other appearances attracted between 50 and 100 fans, mostly students bussed in for the occasion.

“Nobody knew who she was back then,” Moran tells Tactics.

A year later, all that changed for Rowling.

“When she last toured, crowds were everywhere. Thousands of people were chanting and calling her name. It was like touring with the Beatles,” Moran says.

Turns out, Rowling is a tremendous asset to her books’ PR campaigns, Moran adds.

“She’s a huge champion of reading and loves to talk directly to her fans, which is part of the reason for her Web site,” Moran says. “She signs books very fast, but the thing that’s amazing about her is that she makes eye contact with every single person and says something to each of them. She was very involved [in the PR] at the beginning and does what she can now though she has small children and is incredibly busy.”

In recent years, the author has shied away from touring, but the PR and marketing campaigns around each release have grown more inventive, sophisticated and expensive. (They run in the “multimillions” according to Scholastic.)

A campaign for everyone
As part of hyping the forthcoming “Deathly Hallows,” Scholastic is sending the purple three-decker Knight Bus across the United States. The bus, used in the Potter books to transport witches and wizards, began its journey June 1 in New York and will return for the “Deathly Hallows” launch July 21. It is a traveling video studio where fans can record tributes to Harry Potter, which will be made available online.

In advance of the final book, Kyle Good, Scholastic’s vice president of corporate communications and media relations, says her team approached the communications campaign in a simple way.

“None of us sees the book in advance,” she says. “We knew it was going to be the last book so we had our whole Harry Potter team come together — from public relations, executives, production, marketing and editorial — and asked ourselves ‘what do we want to know?’ about the new book.”

From that meeting came the Seven Questions of Harry Potter campaign, which began April 17 and ended July 7, aimed at stimulating discussion about “Deathly Hallows.” Scholastic posted one question every two weeks on its Web site and let the debates rage.

Good admits that Potter is a unique project. “Normally when you’re doing book publicity — especially for children’s books — you’re banging on doors trying to get people’s attention. But, with this book, people are calling us.”

Meg Smith, marketing director of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), which represents 2,000 independent bookstores across the United States, says the Potter phenomenon has spurred local storeowners to invent a myriad of Potter PR campaigns.

“It has been very important as a way to bring attention to other books, to get new readers into the bookstore and show customers the real value of shopping at indies,” she says. “Our members have had multiple chances to do that with each Potter publication. Many of our members plan major Potter extravaganzas with parties and events galore whenever there is a new book. They focus on what they do best with Potter — cater to the community with service and events.”

As popular as it has been, the Harry Potter series doesn’t simply sell itself, Smith figures.

“What we know and what we tell our members is that advertising and PR gets stale, and if you see how each successive Potter book has a higher print run, you can see what the PR and marketing has done to increase the excitement,” she says. “Plus, there are the movies, so book public relations helps distinguish the two, and each builds on the other.”

David Urban, specialist in business and marketing at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Business, says the Potter series has been nothing short of a PR phenomenon.

“There has never been anything like it,” he says. “Months before the book is even published, the public relations is cranked up to persuade people to order advance copies. Obviously, it’s good for the bookstores and the publisher, but it also creates advance buzz about the book before anyone knows what’s in it. There are dozens of different Harry Potter discussion Web sites, apart from the official ones, which are also part of the PR machine.”

Rowling’s PR savvy
Rowling has developed into a remarkable promotion force, says Urban.
She has done some freelance public relations through her Web site, most notably in advance of the fourth book, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” when she warned that a character would be murdered. The warning created a frenzy of Pottermania as fans throughout the world speculated about who the character might be. Rowling, meanwhile, has regularly used her site to dampen speculation while simultaneously stoking curiosity.

“Her fans hang on her every word,” Urban says. “It’s similar to the way the stock market reacts to pronouncements by the chairman of the Federal Reserve. She is also pretty slick in the way she teases her audience.  As soon as she speaks, the blogs and fan sites are trying to figure out what she really means. She is very good at feeding that — walking a fine line of revealing just enough but not too much.”

An important lesson for PR professionals, adds Urban, is what he views as the unprecedented way Potter promotion is integrated.

“It’s not just the use of traditional sources of advertising, promotion and public relations, but the integration of Web-based resources, including blogs,” he says. “That integration is something that all major businesses are trying to achieve. The Potter phenomenon might be extreme and unprecedented, but it’s where every business wants to be.”

Urban uses his own personal experiences as an example of Potter-crazed families across the world.

“My daughter, who is 16, came to the dinner table recently and announced there was a new Harry Potter movie clip on the Web. So what do we do? We go to the computer, pull up the trailer and play it — three times in a row. I love the books. Our family will be buying at least three,” he says.

New York University communications professor Eugene Secunda, a veteran PR professional who founded the J. Walter Thomson agency’s entertainment division, views the Potter PR campaigns as a classic example of well-engineered public relations and marketing.

“J.K. Rowling has been incredibly successful in creating an increasing demand for each succeeding book,” he says, “It is very unusual in communications and marketing to achieve such a high degree of success with a continuing line of products.”

Rowling’s initial success, he says, was “dumb luck” because her formula for writing happened to resonate with a segment of the marketplace.

“Scholastic was smart enough to see something was happening,” Secunda says. “Once they saw Harry Potter was creating a niche, and Rowling had more than one book in her, they were very clever and sophisticated in building the credibility for the Harry Potter brand. They saw how fast the bandwagon was moving and jumped on. They are still riding it today.”

Secunda credits Rowling’s canny ability as a self-promoter for a large part of the PR success behind the Potter books.

“She has created an icon out of herself,” he says. “From the PR point of view, she has handled herself brilliantly because if you are seen to be self-promoting too much, the press will turn on you. But she hasn’t done that. She has been elusive and slightly mysterious enough in her behavior for the media to remain intrigued by her.”

The midnight launches, triple-decker bus and the other PR and marketing paraphernalia are brilliant, observers note, but rooted in marketing methods developed through the 1950s and 1960s.

“It’s all execution,” he says. “It’s tactics. But the strategies are all conventional.”

It’s likely that the Harry Potter brand will become an annuity, as new generations latch on to the books, Secunda adds. He compares it to Disney’s strategy from 60 years ago.

“Disney would rerelease their classics like “Dumbo,” “Fantasia” and “Bambi” every seven years because they figured the new generations were ready to see them. That’s what will happen with the Potter books,” he predicts.

Urban agrees. “The big publicity push will be over soon, but there is a Potter movie out this summer and two more after that. There will be no more new books, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be hearing about Harry Potter for years to come.”

Author and journalist Chris Cobb is a senior writer at the Ottawa Citizen newspaper in Canada’s capital where he specializes in reporting on media and government communication.

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