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Harry Potter and His Marketers' Tone

By Rob WalkerPosted Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2001, at 11:30 PM ET

Kids love Harry Potter, and marketers love kids. So if you have a product to market—like Coca-Cola, for instance—what you want is to figure a way to imply that the children's book hero endorses that product, however indirectly. This fall, Warner Bros. plans to release the movie version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and now the studio has forged what is said to be a $150 million marketing alliance with Coca-Cola.

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Often such marketing deals are mutually reinforcing. A fast food chain splashes the movie name all over its stores and packaging, but on the other hand kids who want some movie-related geegaw available only from the chain drag their parents in to spend some money. But nothing so crass will besmirch the creation of writer J.K. Rowling, who has said that she hates action figures and the like. "You won't see Harry drinking from a can of Coke," an executive at the beverage company assures.

Details are few at this point, but the upshot seems to be that Coke is spending money not so much to get an endorsement as to give one. We may never find out what Harry Potter thinks about Coke, but Coke wants you to know that it is all for Harry Potter. In this curious process, the Potter properties are practically elevated to the status of some kind of charitable cause—as though Coke were making a prominent donation to improve its reputation for doing good works on behalf of society at large.

What this will really do for Coke and its brands remains murky at best. And of course, we'll see how it really plays out. The fictional young man and his famous spectacles will appear on the packaging of some of Coca-Cola's brands, including Coke itself, Minute Maid, and Hi-C. And depending on the details, in-store displays and the like may have the effect of making Potter a subtle booster of Coke products and not just a recipient of Coke's largesse.

But the fact that Coke feels it must tread so cautiously in the early going is excellent news for the brand called Potter and thus for Warner Bros., too. After all, the last thing the film's handlers would want to do in the process of releasing and promoting a global blockbuster is leave the impression that the innocent and lovable Potter was getting dragged into something so unpleasant as the process of commerce.

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Rob Walker writes the Ad Report Card for Slate.

COMMENTS

Reader Comments From The Fray:

What I want to see marketed is Harry's favorite drink, butterbeer. Probably bad for your cholesterol, but maybe they could market a diet version, too

--Timothy Noah

[aka Slate's Chatterbox]

(To reply, click here.)

Potter, unlike Coca-Cola, is the Real Thing, a perceptive human in touch with the several numinous and phenomenal levels of post-industrial experience who is also capable of making kids feel okay about themselves at these different levels. That is subversive of the basic psychology of marketing any useless product. In order to make kids need coke or FUBU or gigahertz pentiums, you have to make the kids feel inadequate and then give them a lifeline through the product back to social acceptance: transparent but time honored manipulation. Harry Potter tells the kids they are okay without buying anything. (Except more Harry Potter books--there is no perfection in this life)

If the film handlers or Coke marketeers "win" they succeed in making the kids feel they need cokepotterabilia to be okay.

Which is a repressive schema completely counter to the Potter paradigm. This is why your news note is actually important, not just the kind of marshmallow mind goo that it seems to be, sandwiched between Temptation Island and Oscar twaddle.

--Zeitguy

(To reply, click here.)

Product placement is visual pollution. It's arguable how big a deal this is, but it does dilute and confuse the artistic content of the movie. The money allows producers to make a fancier film for the same ticketprice. Would you pay more for a movie without Coke cans?

Regular pollution is like this. Dupont(just to pick a random name) could make a helluva lot more paint if they could tip the waste straight down the river like people did in the old days. But everyone whined about the pollution, so they don't do it anymore, and the cost of them not doing it anymore comes out in the cost of paint. So, if it bugs you, bitch to the movie companies. Boycott movies. And be prepared to pay more for movies.

What if movie tickets had variable prices like shares? When you think about it, why should you pay the same price for crud as for a great movie? A market would then develop where the customer could choose expensive morally pure movies or cheap sponsored movies. This would also open up the multiplex/feature movie business to indie producers and other lowcost pondlife.

--Gordon the Aussie

(To reply, click here.)

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