Anatomy of a BrandHarry Potter Brand WizardFor some, Potter-mania seems like a fad, but it contains lessons that are relevant to the entire marketing communityJuly 18, 2005Harry Potter is one of the most extraordinary brand stories from recent years. So much so that there can't be a single person anywhere who hasn't heard of the "boy who lived" and the best-selling books that bear his name. To date, six books in the seven-book series have been published and approximately 250 million copies have been sold worldwide. This places The Little Wizard in third place on the all-time bestseller list, after The Bible (2.5 billion copies sold) and The Thoughts of Chairman Mao (800 million). JK Rowling's books have been translated into 61 different languages, including Icelandic, Serbo-Croatian, Vietnamese, Hebrew, Swahili, Ukrainian and Afrikaans, not to mention new editions in Latin, Gaelic and Ancient Greek. In addition to the books themselves, the first three Harry Potter adventures were made into live-action films by Warner Brothers, earning an estimated $1.6 billion at the global box office and another $750 million in DVD, video and royalty sales. transmission. There are also more than 400 accessory items available: everything from sweets to key chains, from computer games to glow-in-the-dark glasses. The Harry Potter brand is estimated to be worth $4 billion, or so, and Rowling is a dollar billionaire. Not bad for someone who was a single parent in poverty, living on state benefits in an unheated Edinburgh flat, less than a decade ago. As staggering as the sales figures are, the "effect" of Harry Potter goes far beyond profits. The entire children's book industry has been reinvigorated by the achievements of the teenage wizard: boarding school enrollments have soared in the wake of the HP phenomenon; EFL teachers say the texts are ideal workbooks for those who wish to improve their knowledge of the native language, as do parents of children with learning difficulties; owls are proving increasingly popular as pets, much to the dismay of animal rights activists; locations used in the films are proving popular with tourists (although some sites have been reprimanded by Warner Brothers' legal department for advertising the connection); and Potter's vocabulary of "Quidditch", "Muggles", "Gryffindor", "Slytherin", "Hogwarts" and others are now part of the vernacular. The boy wizard is Britain's greatest cultural export since the Beatles and James Bond..