Marketing Harry Potter

As I was walking out of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 last Saturday, I had this crazy vision that involved the marketing strategy Warner Brothers might use.  Immediately after thinking this, I thought "My Dad should not fall into this trap!"  I don't want to fall into it either.  You can fall into it if you want -- that's entirely your choice.  But this is the strategy *I* would use if I were in charge of marketing the latest Harry Potter movies.  This is to say that this entire post is speculative and is in no way associated with the real marketing plan for Deathly Hallows.

First, they're only going to keep the movie in theaters for a few months.  Perhaps once the hype has died down, they'll take it out.  In June, they're going to release the DVD for Part 1.  This way, everyone will buy it right before they see Part 2 coming out in July.  Part 2 will stay in theaters until they start to lose money from it.  Then they're going to release Part 2 on DVD.  For the holidays next year, they're probably going to release both movies together on one DVD with two extra discs loaded with special features and the like. 

My plan:  wait until both movies are on one DVD. 

I wanted to wait to buy Avatar because I had heard they were going to re-release it in theaters and then probably re-release the DVD too.  But, really, no one knew what else to get Dad for his birthday.  And now look what happened: there's the Geek-Version of the DVD with all the extra stuff they cut out and deleted scenes and you can watch the whole thing, including the deleted scenes in one go!  I want that version for Christmas!  (It shall be mine, as in, it will be with me in Madison and not with my parents.) 

So Dad and the rest of my family, don't fall into this marketing trap.  Be patient and wait until the entire Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is on one DVD.  It's so much more cost effective.