Harry Potter and the deathly hallows is the fastest selling book of all time. It sold 8.3 million copies within 24 hours of its launch. It beats the record set by its own predecessor Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince which sold 6.9 million copies in its first 24 hours.

But that is not the biggest success story of this book. Nor is it the biggest lesson that marketers can learn from this book.

The biggest lesson any marketer can learn from this phenomenon comes from J.K. Rowling herself. How & why? Let me ask you this – can you name any product and brand launch in recent times that created this much hype and once it hits the market, the quality of the product meets the quality of the hype? It will only be a handful.

And that is marketing reality for you. We create hype around mediocre products to make it seem like the next big thing. But here comes a book with the world of expectations and surprise, surprise – delivers, if not exceeds the expectations.  And that is the biggest success of this series.

Moral of the story

Get the product quality spot on first. Then make it remarkable. And only then create the hype.