It’s been more than a decade exactly since 1997, when Harry Potter books entered our life and took us into their world of Magic and Adventure. Whether you’ve been someone who stood in line for hours to be the first to see a new movie or anxiously or pre booked the book awaiting a book release to find out if Harry Potter would ultimately crush Voldemort, you have been a part of the Harry Potter revolution. Though, this story goes further than a wizard in a magical world and tends to bend towards the calculated approach that J.K. Rowling took when writing the books and marketing them. Now the movie series has unveiled its last chapter to the world on July 15th but there are many learning’s that can be picked from this entire journey exceeding a decade.
Harry Potter is the last few years has frequently been a trending theme on Twitter, Facebook events and pages are plentiful and an exceptional amount of bloggers generate news feeds on their behalf. Encouraging reviews and promotions that come directly from consumers are more important than the content that comes from the company.
While the first lot of books and films fashioned notable buzz offline, it was the release of the ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ that placed a collection of social networking sites alive with animation and activity. Although the former movie, boasting +325,000 Facebook fans preceding to its release in 2009, was coined as a social media chartbuster, the most recent and the last in the series ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2′, has been nothing short of a sensation, both online as well as offline. Here’s a peep at the enormous marketing push and the huge social media pour the finale observed just in advance of its release on 15th July 2011:
Warner Bros’ endeavour was to stretch out to the numerous Harry Potter fans; and they did just that by introducing a sequence of social media promotions in accumulation to official site, HarryPotter.com.
New apps were released on Facebook to increase the interaction with old fans and engage newer fans. The official Facebook page achieved an addition of almost 100,000 new fans daily in the week prior to its premier in London on July 7th 2011. Also fan pages were created for diverse countries and languages. There’s a fan page dedicated to India too.
Twitter came alive with experts engaging the users on the Harry Potter Twitter account and sharing links, pictures and articles. On the day of the New York premier photos were tweeted live using TwitPic.
YouTube was used to launch a variety of trailer uploads and also the YouTube Harry Potter had a number of official clips, interviews and provided real time updates from Facebook and TwitterOne of the major factors that resulted in an increase in fan base was the sale of tickets online via social media channels.
Adding to the exhilaration was the rapid increase in fan sites such as The Leaky Cauldron and Muggle Net that ascribed to updated data, contests to maintain the fans engagement.
Conversation Volumes and Sentiment Analysis
A Research performed by the Brand Monitor team at Position², for the duration between 19th June and 19th July 2011, shows that:
There was a boost in conversation volumes gradually as the date of release came nearer. The volumes spiked to a monstrous 61,438 on 15th July 2011, when the end hit the big screens for the first time.
- Sentiment analysis leans heavily towards neutral at 77% (mostly links to the trailer).
- 18% of the conversations were positive in tonality (included posts describing the series as part of a ‘magical childhood’).
- The negative tonality, at 5%, comprised of fans expressing dismay over the Harry Potter series coming to an end. Some were upset over the death of key characters in the final battle against Lord Voldemort.
The social media publicity pertaining to ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2′ indicates the dramatic change in the art of film promotion. About five years ago, advertising campaigns were restricted to traditional methods. Now, mostly all movies now have a Facebook page and a Twitter account; and the Harry Potter series was no exception. Warner Bros seem to have thought of it all and executed its campaigning strategy to perfection. Other than sending out the customary press releases and initiating exceptional websites where fans had access to the updates happenings, the studio took to social networking sites to debut the latest trailers; a strategy that has paid off handsomely.
While it was natural for the hype to taper down gradually, its going to be fun watching how the launch of Rowling’s website Pottermore impacts social media.
The final film in the super successful Harry Potter film franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2, opened its arms to the world on July 15th. In the US, it not only set a box office record for midnight showings ($43.5 million), it totally trampled opening day box office records ( $92.1 million on Friday). That’s not only the leading opening-day draw of all times; it’s the highest-grossing single day in U.S. box office history. Then it went on to become the highest domestic opening weekend ($169.2 million), and highest global opening weekend ($478.2 million). The film earned a remarkable $542.5 million worldwide in just four days. This revenue generation and massive opening owes its fair share to social media campaigning.
No comments:
Post a Comment