Summary: [You might care to view “The magic connection” before this.] Brands often use cultural hooks to attract diverse people, but may still treat diversity as a ‘thing’ outside of homogeneity. Sensitivity to diversity isn't by magic - global citizenship has to be learned.
New trend in diversity
The Potter series has sold over 335 million copies, the last book released in July 2007 creating a sales record.
The books have been translated into 65 languages. Since the first one was published in 1997, films, video games, and other merchandise spread the Potter theme all over the world. The business achievement is crystal – the rise of a $15 billion global brand!
And more than just a successful product run, the brand has sparked a new trend drawing children away from computer and television, back to the joys of book reading. The Harry Potter ‘magic’ has indeed transcended global barriers.
The touch of gold
It has proved the touch of gold for JK Rowling, once ‘nobody’, now the highest earning novelist in history.
Forbes has named her the second-richest woman entertainer and the forty-eighth most powerful celebrity of the world in 2007.
Legal restraint
But Rowling has been acutely conscious of copyright infringements. She was unimpressed by the tribute paid to her creation at the annual harvest festival in Kolkata, India.
And she zapped them with a lawsuit for ing her Hogwarts Castle as a festival structure for the 5 days of the Durga Puja festivities.
Legal restraint was sought on the festival a few days before the scheduled public opening, if they failed to pay royalty of INR 20 lakhs (about 40,000 USD) – four times their project cost!
Untested assumptions
What happened? Two distinct mindsets and cultures clashed - the individualistic (Western), and the collectivistic (Non-Western). The latter didn’t think that a tribute might involve copyrights, while the former made a linear association of money ‘investment’ with money ‘profits’.
Both sides operated by their own assumptions. The plaintiff in the case didn’t know that ROI is not always about making more money. And the defendants didn’t realize that the spirit of collectivism doesn’t cover the whole world.
Eventually the lawsuit couldn’t stand because the festival purpose was non-profit and anyway temporary.
Sensitivity not magic
Diversity is of interest to organizations that seek a global presence. It represents huge, untapped markets. But diversity may sometimes be seen as a ‘thing’ outside of homogeneity, useful only for business.
Brands have begun to use cultural hooks to penetrate distinct markets, and attract diverse people to their products. But many tend to forget that the associations and assumptions they have so far got by with, may not work here.
Values often raise conflicts. Fact is differences, visible and non-visible, are a constant between cultures. To maintain or grow business positions in the global marketplace, brands need better cultural homework. Sensitivity to diversity isn't by magic – its global citizenship has to be learned.
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