Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1110: Early Advertising

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

In this podcast, I look back at the advertising of the first ten years of Magic.

I'm pulling away from the curb. We all know what that means. Well, it means I dropped my son off at college, but it's my drive to work. Okay, guys, so today's topic, I'm going to go back to the early days of magic. We're talking like the 90s. And I'm going to talk about advertising, but early advertising for magic. That's my topic today. I'm going to sort of walk through, talk a little bit behind the scenes, and talk through some of the ads and the thought process of the ads

and how it evolved over time. Now, I do want to stress, by the way, that currently, our current marketing team is amazing. We're doing really cool ads. This is me diving back into the past and talking about sort of early magic advertising. Okay, so magic, just refreshing everybody's memory, magic comes out in the summer of 1993, in August, basically, at Gen Con.

And then, so alpha comes out, they print enough for six, what they thought was six months, and they sell out in three weeks. So they make beta, what they now think really is six months, and it sells out in a week. And for the first roughly two years of magic, they are fighting to print enough. It's not until Fallen Empires in 1994,

the end of 1994, that they're able to print enough to meet demand. So it's a good little over a year and a half where they just, they can't print enough. They can't meet demand. So in a world where you can't meet demand, advertising is not super important. Advertising is very, very important

for getting people to buy your product. They might not buy your product. They might not be aware of your product. But when you're struggling to just sell, to sell, you're, you're struggling, not struggling, you're not struggling. You're selling every single thing you print. Advertising, less crucial.

So there is advertising in early magic. Mostly it's what we'll call print advertising. I mean, it's mostly in magazines. The Internet, the Internet as we know it, sort of the World Wide Web was pretty young at that point. We would do digital advertising, and maybe we did a little tiny bit early on, but when magic first started, it wasn't quite what it is today, or nowhere near what it is today. Okay, so the real early magic is very, very basic.

Most of the advertising in early magic is sort of like there's a new expansion coming out. Here's the expansion. You know, show the logo. There's a habit they had in the early days where they would show cards from the upcoming expansion, but they would blank out the cards. There would be no text on the cards. So all you would see is the frame with art in frame.

And so they would sort of hint at things that were coming, but not show you. So that's sort of the earliest phase of Magic advertising. Very simple. There's not a lot to do. It's mostly in magazines. And it's mostly like the new

sets coming out. There is a little bit about magic in general, especially early, the very, very early ads are sort of like we exist. Magic exists. But once magic sort of becomes a phenomenon, they stop worrying about this is what magic is. And it's more about here's the next thing. Mostly to try to encourage people who already play magic to be aware of what the next thing is. Okay, then we get to the next phase. So interestingly, the first phase, and I start working at Wizards, I start freelancing

in 94 and working full-time in 95, October of 95. And so I was there as sort of the second wave maybe of advertising starts to happen. So the idea now is Magic is still doing very well, but they're meeting demand. They can print enough. So now advertising starts to mean something. So now advertising starts to mean something. And when I get there, so back in those days, Magic had what was called a brand team. And the brand team was separate. R&D, early Wizards was very, the way the business was put up was there were different teams that did different work.

So R&D was its own team. The brand team was its own team. Now, the way Magic is structured, Wizards is structured, is it's built around a product. So there is a Magic tabletop team. Studio X is what we're called. So the idea is all the people that make tabletop Magic

all work in the same section and report up through, like Bill Rose is the VP of trading card games, at least tabletop trading card games. And so, as you'll see, having all the product report up through the same people will be important. We'll get to that in a second. Anyway, so in the early days, advertising started as being an extension of the brand team. It would get back to that. Anyway, sorry, jumping ahead of myself.

Okay, so when I first got there, there was a member of the brand team that did marketing. And we're starting to get to the point where they're trying to, like, have a little pizzazz. Like, the early magic ads that were showing off products weren't trying to be clever. It's just like, logo. Maybe there'd be a sentence about what the set's about. But it was mostly sort of just, here's the new set. Now, advertising for magic has always been set-centered, although, as I will get into in a bit, we do start doing some campaigns about magic as a whole.

But this early on, it's more, it's still about, hey, the upcoming steps are coming up. So my stories about this early days is, so R&D at the time, there were two departments that were sort of thought of as having the pulse of the players. One was customer service, who got all the calls from everybody. And one was R&D, because we all were Magic players. I mean, most of us that weren't Alpha playtesters had started as Magic players and then had come to work at Wizards. So a lot of times people would come to us to sort of get a sense of, hey, what would Magic players think of this?

And the other thing I should point out is that when Wizards started, So a lot of times people would come to us to sort of get a sense of, hey, what would magic players think of this? And the other thing I should point out is that when Wizards started, it was a young company. And a lot of the way it grew in the early days was literally like friends of friends. You know, like they were so desperate to hire people that like, oh, I know somebody, you know. And so a lot of the early days of magic, there were a lot of very smart people and a lot of very dedicated people. But it wasn't, it was not very corporate yet in the sense that there were people in roles that, you know, probably weren't like later on, Wizard got a little bit more corporate. We would hire people who had a training in that thing.

And this is what I've done. And the early days, there were people who were definitely doing jobs that didn't have as much training as later on would have. So for example, I'll tell two stories that were super early in Magic. So basically,

the marketing person at the time would pull in R&D members to get their opinion on stuff. Personally, I don't think they actually wanted criticism as much as they wanted us to say we liked it, but they would pull us in. The first ad I ever looked at, so the first set I ever worked on, was Alliances. And it was an ad for Alliances. Now, I studied communications in college.

I focused on broadcasting film was the name of my major, but mostly that meant like entertainment. But there were other sections in the communication school, one of which was PR and advertising. And so I had to take advertising classes. So I'm not by no stretch of the imagination. Am I any expert in marketing? But I had a little bit of a background. By no stretch of the imagination am I any expert in marketing. But I had a little bit of a background. So anyway, I remember we got pulled in for an ad. It was an Alliances ad.

And they're like, what do you think? And my note at the time was, how are they going to know it's Alliances? Because they hadn't put any, the Alliances logo wasn't in it. The word Alliances wasn't in the ad. I'm like, how do they know this is Alliances? And they just had forgotten to put in the logos. Just to give you kind of an idea of early brand people. The other one that I remember is, okay, it was 5th edition and R&D had decided that Sarah Angel was too good. I know. I did not agree at the time. But in fact

in Unglue 2, I made a card called K. Sarah Sarah in which it was a Sarah Angel, but every upkeep you had to say, oh, this is too good. That's just me making fun of... Anyway, Sarah Angel was coming out. I thought it was too good. But Herloon Minotaur. So the early days of Magic, Wizards, there were a couple cards that Wizards as a company got really attached to One of them is Herloon Minotaur So for example, in the early days Wizards sold these jean jackets

And you can get Nightmare or you can get, I don't know who else, I got a Nightmare jacket But anyway, there was one jacket that's only for employees It had a Herloon Minotaur on it So I started working for Wizards, I got the Herloon Minotaur jacket So I think Wizards, I mean, Herloon Minotaur, the art was awesome. Ansem Maddox did the art. The card, you know, one red red for two three was nothing special. Even back in the day where creatures were weaker, it was nothing special. And the players, I mean, once again, the players liked the art, but the card wasn't popular

because it just wasn't good. Sarah Angel was popular. Sarah Angel was good. So they had an ad they made, and it was a letter from Sarah Angel to the Hurling Minotaur. And I'm paraphrasing here, but it was something like, hey, Hurly, it's Sarah. I had to go away for a while,

but I hope you hold down the fort and, you know, make sure you, I don't know, show them who's who or whatever. And so they said, what do you think of this? And I'm like, well, let me give you a player's opinion of this. So Sarah Angel, pretty powerful card, has been in tournament decks. So you're saying, hey, fifth edition, you know that powerful card you really like? Yeah, that's not here.

Well, you know that weak card that you've never really enjoyed? Well, don't worry. It's staying. And I'm like, I don't think they did that ad. Maybe they did. Maybe they redid. But anyway. staying. And I'm like, I don't think they did that ad. Maybe they did.

Maybe they redid. But anyway, so one of the traits in early Magic, really early advertising, is the marketing people did not have a great understanding of our player base. Okay, so what happened next is Wizards grows a little bit, and so they decide that they want to have a true marketing team, rather than just have a person on the brand team that does marketing. So they make a whole marketing team that's now, and this is important, not, it has its own report structure. Meaning the people that are doing the advertising are reporting up through a different chain that's not magic. are reporting up through a different chain that's not magic.

So at this phase, what starts happening is they start hiring people that are actual ad people, people that have more of an actual history of doing ads. The problem is that the people they hire are not giant fans of magic. And I'll be honest, one of the ongoing complaints we had behind the scenes was that we felt they were a little bit disdainful of Magic players. I will give some examples. So early on, Friday Night Magic is now an

established thing. But when we first started trying to promote Friday Night Magic, it might have been called Arena at the time. I know Arena is now the online game, but at the time it was what we called the in-store play. I think we had Friday Night Magic and then Arena was an ongoing thing that sometimes you played Friday Night Magic. Anyway, we were doing an ad for Friday Night Magic. And the ad campaign was nothing better to do on a Friday night. And literally, one of the ads, there's like four ads. It's all people

like bored. They don't, you know, and one of them is a guy like laying on his bed, picking lint out of his belly button. And I remember R&D, we were like, okay, what, what, what's this ad campaign? Hey, is there absolutely nothing better you can do? You're at your bottom level of choices. There's nothing left out there. Well, I guess if there's nothing else to do, maybe you could play magic. Like, what is this? What kind of campaign is this? Like, you know, like the whole idea of advertising is, hey, you know, some people love this. And let's tap into people who love this.

Another one that was similar. They just sort of demonstrates kind of the attitude. one that was similar. It just sort of demonstrates kind of the attitude. They had a campaign that was called The Geek Billionaire Lifestyle. And the idea was it was

hey, play magic and then you can become rich. Like one of the ads had a guy in a hot tub with a lady and like it's in the hot air the hot tub's in the hot air balloon and then another ad, he's water skiing but he's being pulled by like an old Russian sub

and the idea of like, well, you know, I don't know, they were like well, we're trying to show that hey, there's positive attitudes of playing magic but like, I don't, I mean, I feel like the geek, like, I don't know. We were, like, you have to, like, call all our players geeks? Is that something that's important? You know what I'm saying? And it wasn't, like, reclaiming the word geek in a positive, I don't know.

So there was a lot of, that era definitely had a lot of ads. And what starts happening during this era is you start to see some larger pushes. You start to see campaigns, true campaigns. So in advertising, the idea of a campaign is it's something, usually you have a tagline or a slogan, and it shows up in multiple places. Maybe you're using different kinds of media. And the idea is that you're reinforcing some theme. Now, this team, stress, this era of advertising, it wasn't that the people doing it weren't

bad advertisers. For example, I'll tell my favorite ad that they did which I thought was a really really clever ad this era there was some ads that were really good but there were also some cringy ads like I'm talking about we even had one ad that they printed some of us were so mad

we couldn't believe they printed it I'm not going to get into it because I don't want to repeat it but it was an ad for Valentine's Day that was super inappropriate. And we literally had to go to Brand Head and make some rules. Anyway. Okay, the ad that I really liked, the ad that I thought was really, really clever was, this is when Tempest came out, we were introducing pre-constructed decks. So one of the big barriers

to entry is, hey, learning magic is hard, and making a deck is hard. So we said, okay, maybe one of the ways we can make magic a little easier is we can make pre-made decks, pre-constructed decks. So Tempest was the first set that had them. So they wanted to put an ad out that was sort of selling the pre-constructed decks.

So the ad, so it shows the pizza delivery guy, and he has a pizza box and he's opened up the pizza box and inside are all the ingredients to pizza like it's a can of tomato sauce and it's a wedge of cheese and it's

maybe a glob of dough it's all the pizzas you would make but separate it out and the ad slogan the ad said sometimes the ad slogan, the ad said, sometimes, the ad was,

when you don't want to do it yourself, or sometimes you don't want to do it yourself. And I thought that was a super clever ad. So let me, so the thing at the time, I talked about how this was a different group that didn't report into Magic. So the way they had it set up was, they would come to the Magic team. The Magic team was a client.

And they had to pitch some number of ideas for the campaign. And it was like four or five. And then the brand team got to pick which one they wanted to use. And they'd give notes on it. But the brand team could only pick one of the ones they made. So one of the ways they sort of gamed the system is they would make an ad campaign that they liked, and then they would make four other ads that just weren't that good. And they would show them, like, one ad was, you know, I mean, far better than the other ads. And so the brand team was like, okay, I guess I'll take the ad that's the decent ad versus the not good ads.

But they didn't have a lot of say early on. And so, and the other thing that would happen during this time period is we sometimes got ads that like, they weren't always offensive. Sometimes they were just oblique. Like one of the ad campaigns I remember is it was for Onslaught,

the introduction of Morph. And the idea is things can be more dangerous than they seem or something like that. And it would show like a teddy bear, an innocent thing. And there would be an x-ray on the teddy bear and inside was like a knife. You know, the idea that this innocent looking thing inside had something dangerous. And it was trying to convey like, hey, we've got this new mechanic

and you don't know what it is because it's face down. But it was a little bit esoteric and people didn't quite get. I mean, it was a little more edgy. Definitely that group, they were advertising people that were trying to do stuff that was, you know, a little more splashy in advertising. But I think one of the problems is they didn't have a great connection with the audience. And I think they didn't really key into why our players loved the product. Now, another thing that started

happening during that era, the tail end of that era, is the idea of starting to go out and using external ad companies. And we started to get in the era of the TV commercial. So I should stress, early Magic, that it wasn't, we didn't do TV commercials early on. Most of those TV commercials are expensive, and it didn, and in the very early days it wasn't needed, and later on it just was a lot cheaper to do print, so we mostly did print. But eventually we started getting to TV. So for instance, a little bit of trivia, Magic the Gathering was one of the sponsors, one of the very first sponsors of South Park.

And I think one of our very first sponsors of South Park. And I think one of our earliest ads ran during South Park. By the way, there's a little 10-second clip that the South Park people made for Magic. But then we would make an ad. So the first sort of big push, big ad that we did, it, what was the name? I think the ad

was called Entertainment. And it had, like, this music, and it showed lots of people in very shadowed, lit things, and, like, oh, you know, what goes for entertainment these days? And some of us, we play magic. And then, like, it gets bright, and they're playing

magic. But anyway, it introduces the first, what I consider major, like, really campaign slogan of Magic, which is, all you need is a brain, a deck, and a friend. And at this point, Portal was kind of our entry level. So our first big ad campaign went with the creation of Portal. Portal was our first, I mean, we did the ARK system before that, but Portal was our first really big push, we did the ARC system before that, but Portal was our first really big push to

try to get new people in, and so there was a lot of advertising. We finally had the budget for advertising to do TV advertising. That's why TV starts. And we, at the time, we had a van that would drive around. They would go to events. It would go to events around

the country. I remember there was an event here, one of the local music events. And I remember going to it and we would teach people how to play Portal. There was music going on. There would be booths set up and we'd be at booths teaching people how to play. I actually still have my shirt from that event. All you need is a Brady Dick shirt. It's old. It's shown its wear. But I still have that shirt. And this is the start of trying to get a little bit more of like, you know, advertising has a big sort of idea of creating attitude. Like you want people to associate your product with a feeling, right?

So now we're starting to get into getting a little bit more of a tone. So the response to that ad, it was a little I think the player base, I don't know, I think they were happy to see Magic on TV but it didn't really capture the tone. And so at some point here, Magic branch gets control of the marketing,

so it's no longer a separate team. And a lot of what the brand team does is they use external partners. We have internal marketing people, and they do a lot of work, but they work in conjunction with external ad agencies. So the next big one, which is one of my favorite series of commercials, this is like 99, I think.

So the idea of these commercials, they were meant to be more humorous and they showed the, like here at the Wizards headquarters, and they show like R&D as if we were like a bunch of like scientists working on inventions. As if we're making the magic creatures and things, not just a card game. And so it would always open up with this external shot of, it would say like Magic of the Coast

research and development. Actually, that sign was in R&D for many years. And you would see people walking around and there was a guy in a Viking helmet. Anyway, then you would cut inside and you would see people in lab coats playing magic. One of which, by the way, was Brian Seldon, the 1998 world champion.

So these probably were 99. He was one of the scientists. That's a little, like, fun, I don't know, Easter egg. And then, so I will go through this. So they did four ads. I liked the first two they did better than the second two they did, but all four of them were cute. Okay, so the first one was called, I think

it was officially called Bob vs. Org. But everybody now refers to it as Bob from Accounting. So the way it worked was the scientists were like, okay, get the raging goblin and the org. And they, what, the raging goblin is sick?

Okay, get Bob from accounting. And so you then see this like steel room, this big door opens up and Bob from accounting walks in. And Bob is just, he's got some folders and like obviously he's in accounting, he's dressed in a suit.

And then there's another door on the opposite side. It opens up and then Org steps out, who's like, Org's like 12 feet tall, this giant mutated goblin. Have you guys ever up and then Org steps out, who's like, Org's like 12 feet tall, this giant mutated goblin. Have you guys ever seen the cart Org? And then Boblick screams and throws papers everywhere. And then you cut to the scientist sort of watching

from up in a glass thing. And you see Boblick fly up and hit the glass. And they go, round one goes to the Org. So interesting, they did a couple different shots. One of the shots they did we didn't end up using is a splatter of blood comes across it.

They decided that didn't quite match the humorous tone they were going for, or it was a little darker than they wanted. The next one was called Fluffy Bunny. So what they did there is they talk about how they're doing experiments, and they have this machine, and they put in a wrestler

who's holding in one hand a chainsaw and in the other hand a bunny, a cute little bunny. And then the machine goes on, and when they open it up, out comes Kassadrix. If you guys don't remember Kassadrix, Kassadrix is like this crazed purple bunny card.

He's like this monster, but he's a bunny. I think what happened was we gave the advertising people all the magic cards, and they just liked this image. And then at the end of the commercial is, they're saying, but not all our experiments go quite so well. And the elevator dings and out comes the mail boy, but he's a poodle, who we called Poodle Boy. And he's delivered the mail. So actually, by the way, when I made Unglue 2, Bob from Accounting and Poodle Boy were both cards.

And I've actually done articles where I've shown the art, so we actually have art for those two. We talked about later doing them, but no one knows the commercials, so it was past the point. But anyway, in my heart, I like Bob from Accounting and Poodle Boy. So there then was a second series of commercials. One was called The Mailbox, where there is a little raging goblin, and the players are at home, and they're not showing respect to the raging goblin. And then he knocks on the door. It's the raging goblin.

And then he hands him a card, and it's giant growth. And then he grows bigger, and then he throws one of the players into the door. It's the raging goblin. And then he hands him a card and it's giant growth. And then he grows bigger. And then he throws one of the players into the table. And then the other one, which I think was the funnier of the two, was we're doing a focus test where you know, we normally do

these where R&D watches through two-way glass. But here it's the scientist obviously. And there's two players playing. And this one kid has a choice between playing a rocks and some wimpy blue card. And here it's the scientist obviously. And there's two players playing and this one kid has a choice between playing a rocks and some wimpy blue card. And then you the rocks is actually one of the people watching behind the two-way glass.

And the kid plays the blue card rather than the rocks. And the rocks like gets all mad and breaks through the glass. And then the last shot like he's playing with the kid. He's making him play his card. Anyway, this series of ads were a lot more fun. They were funny.

You know, they were definitely... I enjoyed them, and they were a lighter tone. And they actually showed the cards. Oh, the other thing that happened during the period of the group that didn't really have great respect for Magic players also didn't like Magic cards. Like, early Magic showed Magic cards, and then we got to this range where they were embarrassed to show Magic cards.

And we're like, but that's the product. Like, you can't be embarrassed of the product. It's the product. People who buy the product like the product. And anyway, that was simple at that time. But it was nice in the commercial that you would see the product and see actual creatures and stuff. The next

big push advertising, and this is probably the last one I'll talk about because I'm almost out of time, was trying to sort of reconfigure and like how do we make you, the magic player, feel that you're how are you part of the game?

What is your entry level? Who are you? So the next ad campaign was called, You Are a Planeswalker. And it was, the idea there was, it was trying to do sort of a lifestyle approach of sort of like empowering you, the player. Now, interesting little side note is the planeswalker symbol that we all know and love got made for this ad campaign. That know and love got made for this ad campaign. That's what it got made for. The brand team at the time had looked at other brands

and really liked the idea that there was, like, symbology that other brands had, that you could have a shirt, and that, you know, you would know that's the brand. If somebody else who knew the brand would know it, you know, if you're a Magic player, you see the Planeswalker symbol, you know it's the Planeswalker symbol, but people not to know might not know. They thought that was cool.

And so part of you are a Planeswalker introduced the Planeswalker symbol. And at this point, we're starting to get into the early 2000s. Once again, I think early magic, a lot of it was trying to find her feet. A lot of early magic was trying to understand how best to do things. And there was a lot of early stuff, presenting 1,447 ways to die. Or when you, what else? Like simple strategies, infinite possibilities. There were definitely some early ads

that were more about like trying to get a sense of what magic was. Oh, one of the funny things. When we first started advertising Magic Origins, or I'm sorry, Magic, not Magic Origins, Magic Online. We first started Magic Online. One of the campaigns they were joking about doing, which was a throwback to all you need is a brain, a deck, and a friend, was no brain, I'm sorry, no deck,

no friend, no problem. Anyway, it was interesting. A lot of early Magic was trying to understand what kind of advertising did Magic want. And eventually what we realized was that the best advertising for Magic does a couple things. One is, it acknowledges what's awesome about Magic, rather than being embarrassed about Magic. It really embraced, like, hey, Magic's a really fun game, and there's a lot of fun things you can do with it, There's all these possibilities, and it really said, what's going to be cool? Why would you want this thing?

So even now, we tend to do two different types of ads. There's product ads where you're selling a specific product, and that is more about getting the tone of that particular product. And then there's, I don't know what they call them, lifestyle ads, things in which it's more about the feel of the product as a whole. I don't know what they call them, lifestyle ads. Things in which it's more about the feel of the product as a whole. Now, as we've gotten better at magic long-term, like sort of more modern day, they've found a way to do both at the same time.

Early magic tended to do one or the other. But nowadays, like while we're telling you what the newest thing is, we're also kind of viewing what makes magic awesome all in one. But anyway, the other thing I want to point out is a lot of these ads that I'm talking about, the entertainment ad for Portal, called Entertainment, Fluffy Bunny, Bob from Accounting, or Bob vs. Org,

The Mailbox, I'm not sure what the Rocks one is called. All those are online. If you want to see those commercials, you can actually see those commercials. A lot of the print stuff I'm talking about is a little harder to see. I'm talking about is a little harder to see. I'm not exactly sure where one finds got nothing better to do on a Friday night. But it's indelible in my memory.

It's something that I did not like. Anyway, guys, so most of today we just sort of giving a little hint for people that might be, you know, for those of you that did not play Magic in the 90s, a little hinting of some early advertising. And for those that did, ah, remember this, remember that. So anyway, guys, I'm now here at work.

So we all know what that means. It means I'm ending my drive to work. So instead of talking Magic, it's time for me to be making Magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.