Kelley Smith

Harry Potter has defeated the Dark Lord.  Books have been read, movies have been seen, and an amusement park has been built.  Even though Hogwarts will live on in the hearts of millions, it may be time to start reading a new story and obsessing over a new piece of pop culture. Right?

Wrong.

Pottermore, JK Rowling’s newest project, is a website where she says fans will be able to experience the books like never before.  She explains that the site will be an interactive illustration companion to the books.  Fans will be able to play mini games, learn new things about the Wizarding World that were not explained in the books, and earn points to compete for the House Cup.  Fans will even be sorted into Houses by answering questions Rowling wrote herself. The site will be available in multiple languages and will be appropriate for all ages.  Rowling also makes it clear that while Pottermore is an interactive experience, the site is not designed to compete with Facebook, FanFiction, or any other Harry Potter fan sites.

From a marketing perspective, what is most interesting about Pottermore is how the test market was selected.  BusinessDictionary.com defines a test market as “geographical areas selected for a limited scaled introduction of a new product.” This helps anticipate future success and demand for the product. Even though geographical areas are carefully selected, a company has to work very hard to motivate consumers to try the product through creative advertising and engaging public relations. Even with the best efforts, consumers won’t always be wiling to participate especially since the product is still in the introductory stage.

With a site that is likely to attract millions of Harry Potter fans around the globe, Pottermore needed a great test market to work out the bugs.  But instead of selecting a few cities, Pottermore challenged the world to “find the magic quill.”  For 7 days, fans participated in the Magic Quill Challenge where they had an opportunity to answer a trivia question to earn early access to the site. A limited number of spots were open each day and the challenge closed as soon as the spots were full. Fans eagerly logged on each day, often filling the daily allotted spots before noon.  After a week of trivia, Pottermore finally had their test market of 1 million Harry Potter fans.

But this is not just any test market.  Pottermore does not need to worry about fans seeing advertisements or fully participating in the experiments.  This target market has not only voluntarily signed up but they are bouncing in their seats with unmatched anticipation and excitement. This gives Pottermore a unique advantage. Instead of trying to entice fans for their participation, Pottermore has fans knocking on the door.  This enthusiasm will give Pottermore the best results to better prepare for the site’s global launch in October.

Dust off those magic wands! JK Rowling isn’t finished casting spells just yet.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 12th, 2011 at 10:37 am and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.