Scholastic's marketing campaign

[David]

If you go to The Leaky Cauldron (www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/)

or direct to

www.scholastic.com/aboutscholastic/news/press_05192003.htm

You can see details of Scholastic's marketing campaign.  For this 
campaign to break even, it needs to increase sales by, I estimate, 
some hundreds of thousands, depending on the return to Scholastic on 
each additional copy sold.  (Do the retailers contribute to the 
campaign, too?  If so, are they partly vying against one another?)

Does this stack up?  You'd think by now that HP was so well known - 
whether loved or detested - that a campaign isn't going to make that 
much difference.  Those 3 pensioners in North Dakota just aren't 
going to bring in that much revenue.

Anyone here know how they do the sums to decide what to spend on 
something like this?

Or is it a question of middle-management insecurity: "if we *don't* 
have a campaign that outdoes the last one, then customers will 
reason that the book can't be much good and, what's more, if sales 
flop, we can't be blamed by the bosses for not having tried."

David