Seth Godin thinks that the Harry Potter publisher wasted $20 million on security efforts to keep the book under wraps before the release tonight/tomorrow. I think he’s missing the point. They didn’t spend a dime on security. They spent $20 million on marketing. Damn effective marketing, if you ask me. Without the pretense of the “security” the release of the photo images never would have been the headline grabbing stunt it was. The $20 million they’ve ostensibly spent on security measures keeping the book under-wraps has been more effective at keeping the news of the book in the press than $20 million of traditional advertising. Ineffective? Hardly. It even made *me* pay attention–and I’ve yet to read one of the books.

I think his idea of releasing the book with all but the three chapters is interesting. But so what? Then they hype surrounds leaking the last three chapters, rather than the whole book. And what do you gain? Not much. But you lose all that press from the leaking of the whole book…

The secrecy surrounding the release of this book was “security theatre” on a level unmatched except maybe by the TSA. I’m surprised Godin missed that. I think it was a brilliant way to use $20million. Beats the hell out of bus ads.