Chicago Tribune (Illinois), July 18, 2007, Wednesday

Copyright 2007 Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune (Illinois)

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News

July 18, 2007 Wednesday

SECTION: BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS

HEADLINE: Wal-Mart cast as dark lord: Organized labor uses Harry Potter parody in viral marketing campaign against giant retailer

BYLINE: Sandra M. Jones, Chicago Tribune

BODY:

Jul. 18--The Ministry of Magic is paying Waldemart to build a store at Hogwarts. The giant corporation has bulldozed Hagrid's hut and turned the Quidditch pitch into a parking lot. The small shops in Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley are in danger of shutting down.

And, what's that, Lord Waldemart in a black cape with a yellow smiley face?

Is this some twisted scene from the latest "Harry Potter" installment? Hardly.

Welcome, instead, to organized labor's pitch to the YouTube crowd.

This latest effort takes on Wal-Mart Stores Inc. via a viral marketing campaign that spoofs the wildly popular Harry Potter series just as the fifth Potter film debuted to a record box office last week and the seventh and final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," is set to debut at midnight Friday with a record-setting first run of 12-million copies, many of which will be sold in Wal-Marts.

Wal-Mart Watch, the Service Employees International Union-backed group that has dogged Wal-Mart for the past two years, is changing tactics, using humor to get its message across to a new generation of potential activists who are more accustomed to browsing online video sites such as YouTube than walking in a picket line. It's the second time the group has launched a parody -- the first debuted on YouTube in October -- and it's the first time it set up a Web site to poke fun at the company it tried and failed to organize.

"Unions are still struggling with their image, but they've gotten way better at marketing," said Richard Hurd, professor of labor studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "The timing is perfect, and it's very creative."

Earlier this month on video-sharing site YouTube, the group launched a three-minute video, "Harry Potter and the Dark Lord Waldemart, Part 2," that parodies the labor and business practices of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer. The accompanying Web site, WaldemartWatch.com, tells the story of Harry, Ron and Hermoine fighting the evil Lord Waldemart from taking over the wizarding world, discriminating against giants and other minorities and treating the hard-working house elves unfairly.

The video mimics the trailer to the latest Potter movie "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," which opened July 11 with a one-day box office take of $44.8 million, a record for a Wednesday debut. Andrew Slack, a comedian and activist, spent hours studying the Potter film trailer before writing the script with fellow actors at the Boston-based comedy troupe The Late Night Players. The troupe rushed to produce the film in less than a month, so it would be ready before the Potter madness crescendoed this week.

"I'm a big believer in the power of humor to create social change and get the message out there," said Slack, 28. "In this YouTube era, viral marketing is a great way to spread the message. We don't want anyone feeling that they're being lectured at. We want to break away from that to what they're interested in, and humans tend to be interested in laughing."

Slack, who plays the evil Lord Waldemart in the video, is also founder and executive director of the Harry Potter Alliance, a 2-year-old online human-rights organization that connects Harry Potter fans to social justice causes. Slack got the idea to start the organization after reading that author J.K. Rowling, before she became famous, investigated human-rights abuses in Africa as a researcher at Amnesty International.

Wal-Mart, for its part, has its own publicity machine in motion, preparing for Friday's unveiling of the final Harry Potter book with midnight Potter parties at all 24-hour Wal-Marts and rallying fans to take a "pledge" at MakeThePledge.net not to divulge the ending of the book.

"Speaking of spells, the film is full of misinformation except for one part -- our commitment to low prices and saving people money so they can live better," said Melissa O'Brien, spokeswoman for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart.

The Waldemart video had 10,000 hits a day, according to Wal-Mart Watch spokesman Nu Wexler. The YouTube link had generated 8,800 hits as of Tuesday night. The first Waldemart video had 457,000 hits in October on YouTube.

Just how popular the latest Wal-Mart spoof will ultimately be is hard to say. Wal-Mart Watch is banking that, at minimum, the video was a low-cost way to "talk to an audience that otherwise wouldn't be engaged in these issues," said Wexler.

"The power of this stuff is that it isn't that expensive to do and if it catches on it can have a substantial impact," said Tim Calkins, clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Evanston. "Most of them don't go anywhere, but if something does capture the imagination, it can go far beyond what you can buy in the media."

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smjones@tribune.com

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