Start The New Year With Your Favourite Wizards 🪄 As They Are Back!
The original cast of Harry Potter are back at Hogwarts after 10 years.
Harry Potter fans are feverishly 😆 re-watching the franchise films after HBO Max released a new teaser for the forthcoming reunion special. The streaming service released a first look 👀 teaser for “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts” on December 5 (Sunday) ahead of its release on New Year’s day, amid rising fan excitement.
The new teaser features familiar faces like Robbie Coltrane (who played wizarding school Hogwart’s groundskeeper, Hagrid), Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom), and Mark Williams (Arthur Weasley). In addition to Coltrane, Lewis and Williams, Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix Lestrange), and Gary Oldman (Sirius Black) will also star ⭐️ in the forthcoming special.
The story of Harry Potter on the printed page 📄 and big screen is just as magical as the story of Harry Potter from a marketing and branding perspective. It is one that all marketers and business owners can learn from.
Here are 5 🖐 key elements that helped drive the success of the Harry Potter brand, which small business owners can implement, too:
1️⃣ A good product
Clever 🧠 marketing and savvy business practices can only sell a bad product to a limited extent. If customers’ expectations are not met, repeat purchases dwindle, and word-of-mouth marketing comes to a screeching halt. At its core, the Harry Potter books 📚 were good, and they consistently met customers’ expectations. Your product has to do the same thing or it will fail.
2️⃣ Emotional involvement
A product, business or brand cannot become a phenomenon like Harry Potter without the emotional 😭 involvement of customers driving it to that status. To achieve customer emotional involvement in your own product, business or brand, you need to have a good product that meets their needs consistently, and that product needs to deliver 🚛 what is called the "3 Ss" of customer loyalty.
That is, creating feelings of stability, sustainability, and security. Without that kind of emotional involvement, your success will peak long before the phenomenon status comes into view.
3️⃣ Word-of-mouth marketing and an online buzz
Ask 100 people how they first heard about Harry Potter, and the vast majority of them (if not all of them) will tell you they heard 👂 about Harry Potter from another person, such as a family member, friend or colleague. Leveraging the power of the internet as a catalyst to build word-of-mouth 👄 marketing is important if you want to achieve similar success.
Fans always wanted more of the Harry Potter brand, and the internet 🌐 became a place where the Harry Potter community could socialise, network, and experience the brand in their own ways. While J. K. Rowling and her U. S. publisher first sent cease and desist letters 📮 to owners of fan sites and blogs, writers of fan fiction, and creators of fan art, they quickly realised that allowing customers to take control of the conversation on the social web and make the brand their own was far more powerful than trying to stop it. You need to give up control and let the conversation 🗣 flow, too.
4️⃣ Tease and perpetual marketing
By leaving customers wanting more, each marketing tactic implemented to promote 📣 that brand (directly or indirectly) can build upon the one before it until the anticipation and buzz reaches a fever pitch. Leaking bits and pieces of information, holding promotional events and contests, and creating a veil of secrecy 🤫 around the next product to launch related to a brand can drive the word-of-mouth marketing necessary to boost sales to the highest level possible.
The team behind the marketing of Harry Potter improved at tease and perpetual marketing over the lifecycle 🔄 of the brand. Apple is another great example of a company that leverages tease and perpetual marketing quite well in order to boost 📈 sales. You can also integrate a tease and perpetual marketing strategy into your own marketing plan to build excitement around your business.
5️⃣ Brand consistency and restraint
Once customers become loyal 🤝 to a brand and develop an emotional connection to it, it is vital that nothing is done to damage the brand or betray customers’ loyalties to it. In other words, you must meet customer expectations in every branded interaction or else they will be confused 🤨 and turn away from your brand in search of one that does consistently meet their expectations.
When faced with opportunities to extend the Harry Potter brand, J. K. Rowling exercised restraint in an effort to protect 🛡 the brand she loved. She said no to merchandise pitches and refused to allow Harry Potter to appear on a McDonald's Happy Meal. The Harry Potter brand continued to deliver on its brand promise, and brand loyalty and brand advocacy continued to grow 🌱. You need to use the same consistency and restraint in your own marketing initiatives to ensure your brand promise does not waver in customers’ minds.
Harry Potter is the perfect example of a fundamental branding truth: customers build 🧱 brands, not companies. Marketers might nudge customers in a desired direction, but at the end of the day, it is the customers who experience a brand, make it their own, develop emotional involvement with it, become loyal to it, and advocate 💪 it who are actually responsible for the success or failure of a brand. Let them experience your brand, and you will open the doors to the potential success known to leading brands like Harry Potter.
While your level of success might not reach the multi-billion dollar brand value that Harry Potter has reached, by applying these strategies to your marketing plan, you will position yourself for long-term, sustainable business growth. Talk to us so that we can help you and your business succeed 🤩😎!
References:
Gunelius, S. 2010, November 22. The Marketing Magic Behind Harry Potter. Entrepreneur.
Sachdeva, M. 2021, December 6. ‘An emotional rollercoaster’: Harry Potter fans react to new teaser of reunion special. Independent.
