To promote new series Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking, Food Network launched a multi-platform, multi-faceted campaign aimed at maximum reach with participation across WBD departments, divisions and external partners to raise awareness, create excitement and drive tune-in for premiere through finale. As part of that outreach the team sought ways to evoke the magic of Harry Potter.
Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking combines the global fandom of the beloved Harry Potter franchise with the power of Food Network’s programming, particularly the Q4 holiday lineup. The strategy was to reflect the appeal of both these powerhouse brands and properties while promoting the new series. A series of magical recipe videos were created capturing the magic of the series and the Harry Potter world, featuring recipes inspired by it alongside others that could easily be recreated at home.
This was the largest digital campaign done by the team - super-serving Food Network’s core food audience as well as the highly-engaged Harry Potter superfan community. To date social content across platforms inclusive of the magical recipe series has garnered 97 MILLION views and 120 MILLION social impressions, with 28 different videos passing the viral 1MILLION views mark, and the premiere episode was Food Network’s most-social premiere of all time, with over 30 MILLION impressions for the content. The linear series wrapped its first season ranked as the #1 non-news/sports cable program on Thursday nights and having reached more than 16.4 million viewers with a second season already picked up.
