Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #775: Rachel Agnes

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

In this podcast, I interview Rachel Agnes, Magic brand manager. What does she do and how did she come to do it? Listen in and find out.

I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. Okay, I've been doing lots of interviews while I've been at home and today continues with another awesome interview. Today I have Rachel Agnes. Hi, Mark. Yeah, hopefully I can live up to another awesome interview. I certainly hope so. Okay, so the question I've been asking everybody to start with is, how did you get into magic? Great, yeah. So this is phenomenal. Actually, I have a fun little tidbit. Just recently, as in a few days ago, I got a little pop-up on my Facebook, in my Facebook memories, if that makes sense, where it actually reminded me of the exact day, literally the exact day that I learned how to play magic. And it was nine years ago. And I learned how to play magic.

I had I'm from Southern California. I had just moved to San Diego and I didn't know anyone. I knew like four people in the entire city. And my roommate suggested that I come to play board game night with their friends. And since I didn't know anyone and I needed friends, I thought it would be a great opportunity. And when I got there, they were actually they were playing magic. And they asked if while we waited to play the board game, if I wanted to sit down and learn how to play. And the two decks that they were playing were an infect deck. were playing were an infect deck and then the other but yeah and then the other deck was a i mean a jace blue white control deck stoneforge mystic really phenomenal super powerful deck and it's kind of funny because the two things that i love most about magic now is blue white control

and phyrexians and phyrexian mana. So maybe in my formative years, when I learned how to play magic, that was really important. And the rest is sort of history. I learned how to play then. I was obviously very bad, as you normally are when you first learn how to play magic. But I loved it.

And I immediately was, how can I be the best at this? How can I play so much of this that I can beat everyone else? So what was your first set? So my first set that I started playing with was Innistrad. Innistrad, okay, original Innistrad. Original Innistrad, yes. Okay, so where did you, you started playing, so how did you advance as a Magic player?

Yeah, so I started playing, like I said, that's how I learned. And then that group of friends, I started hanging out with them more and we would go to our local game stores and we would draft and I had no idea what I was doing and I hate not knowing what I'm doing. So then I started getting on the internet and reading about how to be better at Magic and how can I draft and how can I build decks and and truly um something that that is important to me is like a competitive I have a competitive I need a competitive outlet in my life and magic sort of gave me that like it gave

me this thing that I can learn so much about and and continue to get better at um and that's sort of where where it took me and then I became really close with like certain stores in the area and like would work at PTQs for them and things like that. Okay. So, uh, and at some point, so you said you drafted a lot. Yes. Yeah. So that's what I first started. That's what I first started doing. And then I got really into standard and really into eternal formats. really into standard and really into eternal formats um and then i started writing um articles for eternal format specifically for vintage um and then i was lucky enough to be on the vsl and then um i kind of i just i felt the need to continue to continue branching out more and more and more and the next big thing for me was that i sat down and i played commander and commander just had a like really spoke to me because i could build whatever deck that i down and I played Commander and Commander just had a like really spoke to me

because I could build whatever deck that I wanted and I can and I could personalize it and I can I could make a really good deck but it still felt like mine rather than than you know just pulling a deck off the internet and I asked I as I started getting into into Commander one of the things that I wrote I wrote out in the world was hey I really want to start an article series about Commander as I learn it. And as I know more, I feel like I have a really big value add from the area in which I came from, which is wanting to be competitive, but also understanding the fun element of Commander. And I started writing a Commander series articles, which got me playing more and more and more of the format. Okay. And so eventually, what happens? What's the end of this Commander story? Yeah. So, well, it's not over.

It's not over. Sorry. So far, up to now. Yeah. So one of the things that I've been really lucky and where that has led me is playing, you know, playing a lot with playing a lot of commander writing articles for commander was I was asked to be a member of the CAG, which is the commander advisory group. And they work alongside the RC. They advise the RC on things in the in the commander community that they see things that people would like or don't or don't or would not want to like or don't like and what is the rc for people that might not know what the rc is oh yeah so the rc is the rules committee so they um are the arbiters of commander so they decide like the ban list and the rules and if there's ever going to be a change in anything they are the ones who decide that so they they're kind of the fathers of Commander. Okay, so you got very involved.

So it sounds like you got more and more involved in the community as time went along. That's definitely 100% true. I personally view myself as a student of the game. And what I mean by that is I truly love like all aspects of magic not just one so like I really love the competitive element and I really love the fun element of like commander and the more casual and I love the art on the cards um and I love like the collecting aspect and you know having like a ton of like really nice cards and foils and like unique stuff

um I love like collecting like beanies, like magic beanies and stuff. So I really love all of magic. But the reality is, is what has kept me playing for nine years is the community, right? Like is all of the amazing like friends that I have made along the way that are some of my best friends and all of the places that I've been able to go and stuff. So as I, as I played more magic, I've just become more and more and more involved in the community for sure. Okay. So how did you go from magic fangirl to wizards employee? Magic fangirl. I like that. I'm going to use that. Um, yeah, so I, um, have, so I have a

bachelor's degree and I also have a master's. And I was working in Southern California as a marketing analyst at the time. And I saw an open position for an esports community manager at Wizards. And I took the position even though I wasn't sure. I applied for the position and I was lucky enough to get it. And I moved up to Seattle on very little little time, like I'm talking like a three week turnaround, not knowing exactly what that position was going to be or what that position was going to hold for me. I moved up, I loved it. I loved working at Wizard. And then there was an

opening for another position, which is a brand manager for Magic. And it was a really great fit for me. So I i and i was able to get it and that's what i currently work doing um because i had experience in marketing i had both like education wise and actual like lived experience in marketing but i also have a lot of experience in magic and that's that's a cool those are two very important things in being a brand manager for magic okay so one of the reasons I've been doing these podcasts, especially with Wizardsfolk, is I believe there's this illusion like I and three of my friends somehow make magic, when in fact there's hundreds and hundreds of people that make magic.

And so I'm trying to expose people to a lot of different roles. So you are a brand manager. What does that mean? What do you do? Yeah, so a brand manager is sort of a Jill of all trades, if you can if you can think of it that way. So what I do is I sort of oversee a lot of our marketing campaigns. So, for example, I'm involved in like the really cool Zendikar launch that we just had that you hopefully just saw a few weeks ago. Now, when this is coming out with the trailer and the launch video and all of the announcements, I tried to help make that happen. So I tried to market magic both to our core

audience and other people as well. So it's a lot of touching a little different, a bunch of different things, but it's really about kind of like that moment of taking the product that, you know, Studio has created and figuring out the best way to bring it to our players and bring that joy to everybody. So I want to dive deep on, we're going to use Zendikar Rising as our example, since that's the most recent set. So I just want to sort of walk people through,

because I have some sense of this scope, but I don't think most of our listeners do. Okay, so we've made Zendikar Rising. It got designed. It gotar Rising. It got designed. It got play tested. It got edited. They made packaging. Anyway, when do you get involved?

When do you, when do you, when's the first thing you do on Zendikar Rising, let's say? Yeah, so I don't actually touch making the product in any way. The product, when it gets to me and the stuff that I do, the product is already made and ready to go. The set has been designed. You know, phenomenal packaging has been chosen for it, et cetera. I get it before it actually goes out the door to our consumers.

I work in conjunction with many, many other people on things like the preview plan and things like the assets that go out with the set, how we talk about the set, when we talk about the set. I'm not the arbiter of all those things, but I'm involved in those things. So real quickly, just because you're using some terminology the audience might not know. So when you say an asset, what is an asset? What does that mean? Like a graphic, like a little picture that you might see on social media or you might see like as an ad for magic right so one of the things that happens is uh okay it's time the set's going to come like how much you get involved how long before the set comes out i would say we generally start planning and we generally need to start planning a few six seven months before okay so we we come to you and say, okay, Zendikar Rising

is all done. I mean, it's made. We know, you know, okay. Now, what are you going to do? What do you need to do with Zendikar Rising? So you have the set. Okay, so you're... What are you figuring out exactly? We're figuring out, when we're talking about the set, we're figuring out, when we're

telling people about the set, when we're revealing packaging, when we're starting previews, what those preview are how do they how do those previews go um like how are we just sending them out we're figuring out like what how are we are we going to have a launch video or um the trailers or all of those things when do we release those what do we release before those what do we release after those all What do we release after those? All of that, like the entire picture, like everything that you see touches the people that I work with. I don't do all of that. I'm one piece of that.

Right. Okay, so I just want to take some component pieces so we can do that. I'm trying to dig in deep here so people can see all the stuff that goes on. So let's take the trailer as an example. Yeah. Okay, so how much before the set coming out, like how long does the trailer take to make? Trailers take a long time to make.

That's our longest, that is the longest thing. They would take a year. Okay, about a year. Okay, so now one of the things, like, for Zendikar Rising is, are you involved in sort of, like, what the messaging of it is? Yeah, yeah, absolutely yes i mean hopefully the messaging is dictated by the product right like we we would need to find like a nice balance but yeah absolutely okay it's like the taglines and things like the copy that you see

yeah and so what happens is there's a team that makes it you're not making the trailer but you need to check in from time to time to make sure that they're not going astray from the message right yes exactly um a lot of my job is not super glamorous like it's about hey how many cut downs of the trailer do we need well we need to have the full trailer but you also need 30 second cut downs that you can play in in these areas and and you know this type of this region needs this like um type of type of trailer and those types of things so there's a lot of like little glamorous work that's probably not super exciting to the audience but it's all things that go into making magic be accessible to everyone across the world right so and once again i'm just staying on the trailer here so

we can talk about all the things the trailer do. Okay, so first off, you have to make sure they stay on message. Make sure that whatever the message we're trying to sell is that the trailer's matching the message. And then, how is it getting used? And like you're saying, the trailer gets used in many different places. It's not just like, yes, the full cut

trailer will probably be on YouTube or whatever, but you know, there's small versions of it that different markets might need that's a 30 second or you know you have to figure out all the different ways it's getting used exactly yeah all of that very unfun stuff that is like the little things like making sure you have localized end cards so that or making sure you have the trailer has burden you know asset or a burdened subtitles for different languages if there's talking in it and all of

those types of not super fun things, but things that need to be done so that everyone can enjoy it. And I do want to highlight again, I'm not the only person who does this. We have many, many, many teams who work on the marketing campaigns for all of our sets. Okay. So for Zendikar, you did the trailer. Okay, also, what else is there? What else did Zendikar Rising have to do? Yeah, so a ton. So the preview plan that you see happens. And again, this is a concerted effort for the entire marketing organization, works on those things. The trailer, the video that you saw after the trailer, so the Zendikar launch video where we previewed a bunch of cards and we talked about the 2021 announcement coming up. We all work on that in the marketing organization. Paid media,

for example, we work on. We just work on all everything that you see about Zendikar touches the marketing organization in some way. So more quickly, I love diving into stuff. Paid, what does that mean, paid advertising? What does that mean? It's just, you know, when you see, if you see like a little something for zendikar raising so that we can make sure that people know that the set is coming out for example basically anything that you see like social media that is what the marketing organization works on anything that you see outside about um zendikar Rising or any other set. Right. And what happens with every set,

we can talk about Zendikar Rising, is there's some central focus, right? There's some, we're trying to get the audience excited. So we have to focus what we're saying. It's about something, right? That there's some, so let's talk a little about Zendikar Rising. What was Zendikar Rising about? What was the focus we were trying to do?

Yeah, so ultimately, you know, we partner with people like you, Mauro, and the product team to figure out what is the set? What is the exciting thing about the set and it was a true return to that adventure feeling of the original Zendikar before Battle for Zendikar. So that feeling of adventure and excitement in the party and those, we really look to create things that highlight that aspect of the set. So what are some things that you do that you don't think anybody is aware that somebody even does? So I think the most important thing is that I work with so many teams and I work with so many, we call them channels, I work with so many teams that do everything that you can't imagine. So for example, I work with the

web team and the web team creates all of our product pages, but all of our product pages need to be localized in all of our languages. And that's a huge, like that, that right there is one huge thing that takes forever to do, you know, through everything like that. I work with the social media and the community team to be able to create cool activations and i work with all of our regional teams to make sure they have the things that they need um the reality is is there is a ton of stuff that goes that goes on um for every single um for every single um set that comes out so yeah you hit us something that's also really important is we're a global brand. Magic is put out in 11 languages. And how many markets do we have?

How many markets do we have? A lot. And so one of the things that's interesting, as you're saying, is it's not just that you have to plan the release here in the United States. There's releases in almost every continent. I could say Antarctica. there's releases in almost every continent i could save antarctica but um and then that right each one of them there's different languages in different places and different uh different venues to require different um assets as you will um and like i one of the things that's funny is i think when people see what they see like whatever marketing we whatever you're seeing that whoever's

listening to this, you're just one person in one market. And so there's a lot of balls in the air. Yeah, for sure. And for example, we have regional teams that are in all of those areas that we work with to make sure that they have the things that they need and they have their own marketing plans that they execute on for every single campaign. You touched on something that's really, that I think is really poignant, which is a lot of times what the audience ends up seeing or our players end up seeing is the finished product, which is awesome. That's what we want them to see. But so much time and effort goes into all of those things. So as an example, the launch video that we recently

had for Zendikar Rising with Becca and Jimmy, and we previewed a ton of cards. To be able to have that done, you know, we have to work with someone, we have to create a set, we have to figure out what we're going to put in that set, we have to figure out what are the things that we want to talk about, what are the most important things that our players are going to want to know, what's going to excite our players, what are they going to care about, those types of things. And then we have to film it and then after we film it that's that's that's like right there like two days three days of of of going back and forth especially in covid and working from home world it's even longer um and we have to do all these weird hoops so then we have to film it and then we have to cut it down and then we have

to go back and forth and then we have to there's so much that even goes into just that um and hopefully if everyone gets a chance to see it there's like a portion where we have a behind the scenes that gives a little bit of a clue into what all of the work that goes into that but that is just hours and hours of so many people's time to make that come to reality for our players so so let's take that the video that we did how many different versions of them how many different versions did you see I saw I think by the end so the before we actually filmed we hit

17 versions about 17 versions of what we were going to say and how we were going to say it and who was going to say it etc the script basically yes the script basically but we don't follow the script 100% but it etc the script and yes the script basically but we don't follow the script 100 percent but um so we have like 70 versions of that and then we have the the actual video by the by the time it was finished probably about nine or ten cuts we've seen which means i get to see it

you know other people get to see it we all get to see it and make make sure that we have like appropriate notes and we're and we're being and we're making the best video for our players that we possibly can um so you can imagine the the back and forth and all the fun stuff and while this is going on for example that's just that video the trailer is going on and you're i don't see how many cuts of the trailer and exactly exactly Yeah. So there's a ton of other things. So brand manager kind of touches all of those things, if that makes sense, and make sure that everything is on rails, make sure that everything is going in the right direction. and you know but um there's a lot of different kinds of advertising that go on um do i talk a little bit about like when you market a set how many different venues are you marketing on just so many especially when you consider it's almost like like it's hard to actually qualify and quantify um there are so many and like every region is also different and the needs are of

each region are different. But the most important thing is that we always try to look back and say like, hey, where are our players and where can we make sure we put a lot of effort into into where they're they're going to come across things, where they're going to see things and what's going to make them happy, essentially. OK, and here's another interesting aspect of this. So not only do we make stuff we obviously make trailers and this and that but another big part of marketing is especially in this day and age with with the internet and such is we've we have a whole community right and we want we not only do we want to market it but we want to enable our community to market it so let's talk a little about how does that happen yeah so i mean i think essentially so previews are a good opportunity for that or a good thing that we do do with that and i think um you know my biggest thing like if i step away from all of the really sort of boring

and nitty-gritty stuff that i'm talking about i think the coolest opportunity that i have and the thing that makes me really excited to get up every day and work with magic is I want to make magic players feel super like unapologetic I want magic players to to feel like magic is so cool because it truly is um and I feel like if we do a good job of just giving our players what they want and and um providing them with like really high quality stuff that they can get super excited about. They then get super excited and they want to talk about magic and they want to make content about magic. And I think that's the that's the best relationship is us being able to really excite them with all of the cool stuff that we do and make them feel like so ready and excited to want to play magic and and talk about zendikar or whatever other set

okay so we talked video we talked um the the the um trailer we talked about um doing previews oh actually we didn't let's get into previews we didn't talk too much previews so what is the essence of a good preview season? Well, I think that that is dependent on the set. And I do want to highlight I don't own previews by any means. That's definitely like another team. But I work with them on certain things that I need for the debut video or certain big beats in marketing that we're looking for, right?

And those types of things. But I think what makes a good preview season is, you know, just being able to hit, like, get people previews that really, like, resonate with them and get different outlets previews that make sense. I think the rest is – I think it's different per set I'm going to use a little metaphor, I like metaphors so one of the things that I think a brand manager is kind of like

is a conductor in the sense that you have this all the teams are all the musicians playing all their instruments and it's not that you're playing any instrument but you are sort of understanding the strength of all the instruments and making sure they're all playing together so that there's a unified sort of message through the, you know, Zendikar Rising is coming out and everybody's sort of saying the same thing so that it all sounds like one big message rather than lots of little messages. Exactly.

Like, hopefully what I'm talking, when I'm talking about all of the different things, they all have subject matter experts that that do those individual things. Right. Like we have we have a team that is phenomenal, like a creative team that's phenomenal for the videos. We have a social and community team that that manages that. But you're right. Like a brand manager has to be able to oversee it all and make sure we're all we're all in tone. You're 100 100 correct in that now the one of the things about magic which which i'm curious i mean something i enjoy but i'm curious from you is every set is just really different so marketing icoria is very different from marketing pharaohs behind death which is very different from marketing um throne of eldraine

which is very different from Zendikar Rising. Do you enjoy the fact that every set is so radically different, or is there challenges to that? I mean, there's definitely challenges, of course, because it's not as formulaic as you would make it a little bit easier. But ultimately, that's something that I'm obviously very excited about, right? Being able to move on to the next set and think about like what's unique about it and what are our fans really going to love about it and what is the most important thing. Like obviously there's a thousand things you could say about a set at any given time, right?

Like there's so many. And being able to find like the core thing that's just A, true to the set and B, really going to excite our players is so exciting. And if you didn't have different sets, it would become boring very fast. So what, do you have any, so all the sets you've worked on, I mean, you've been there, you've been there a year? Yeah, so I've worked at Wizards for about a year, a little over a year now. So what is your favorite story've worked at wizards for about a year a little over a year now so what is your favorite story of working at wizards my favorite story of working at wizards wow i i you know i i feel like i'm a little bit um i feel like i'm a little bit biased because it just happened

so but that's okay um i just um zendikar rising when we launched zendikar rising and what i mean by launch is we had you know preview started uh we had the trailer go out to our players a trailer for zendikar rising and we have the 2021 um creative slate announcement um that went out i think i've never been so happy as that day, because being able to, to truly see the community respond so well, and to just see how excited and how happy they were, and, and just see true, like, excitement for next year, and for Zendikar rising and for everything was so amazing because honestly, um, what I wish people could see more is how many people worked on that and how many people put in so many hours to be able to bring that to them, um, and to be able to make

that happen and for them. And we inside wizards, we were, we were currently all working from home right so um we had to do it 100 remotely which is so difficult to be able to to coordinate something of that of that scale 100 remotely and we just were all in this this team's chat together and to see how excited everybody who i worked with was to see how happy everyone was about that is just honestly like one of the most touching one of the most touching moments because a lot of those people pulled long hours to make that happen they pulled like working on the weekends for certain things and then to be able to see it pay off and to see our our community get really excited is like something I think you can't really put into words.

Yeah, the other thing for the audience to understand is we spent so much time, like, it's funny, you're talking about Zendikar Rising, and like, I stopped working in Zendikar Rising about a year before you started working at Wizards. And so... It's so odd in my organization because that's something that people also might not know is when it gets to me and I'm working on it the people that that actually worked on it and made it happen they they haven't

worked on this set in years so I'm coming to them and asking them and they're and they're like having to deal with all of my questions about like what do you know what about this and what about that and they're like well hold on I need to to like bring myself to two years ago yeah it's funny i uh when i write my article the first thing i always introduce my team when i write my article and i always definitely go okay who is my team again because i've had like eight teams since then and so it's like it's trying to remember um so anyway we are i i'm almost to work here. So as we wrap up, I want to talk a little cryptically. Obviously, we can't say anything in specific, but a little cryptically about the future.

How excited are you for the future of magic? I am so not just saying that some of the stuff that I've been excited, excited about and have had to hold had to hold in for for, you know, months is now out with the with the latest announcement. Like, for example, the old border cards. I have just been dying to tell people about that for ever. But the the craziest thing is I see how the community is reacting to 2021 and how excited they are about like what we're bringing and what's insane to me is knowing what's coming after that and knowing that it is going to be a phenomenal encore that it's like because it almost feels like it almost feels like wow how can you top 2021 yeah no. No, it's funny. It's there.

It is. I think that the next year's slate is just one of the best slates we've ever done. And the year after might be even better. We're really sort of just ramping up. So it's exciting. There's some super, super, super, super exciting things that if I was a Magic player, like, I would hold onto my hat, like, 100%, because it is going to be a roller coaster. Yeah, it's funny, every once in a while we'll announce something, they're like, how did you hold that in for so long? I'm like,

well, it's hard. Oh, anyway, okay, so it looks like I've made it to my desk. So I, any final thoughts before we, I bid you adieu for the day nope I just want to say like ultimately the coolest thing about working at Wizards is that it is truly sort of my dream job and the cool beyond that so many people that I work with it's their dream job too and we often have like multiple times in in meetings and things like that where we ask ourselves, well, what about the player? What would they want? And I just want to bring it back to the fact that the community is so important. And it will remain important to us.

Okay, that's very good. So anyway, guys, I'm now at my desk. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I want to thank Rachel for being with us. Yay! Thank you very

much for listening. And guys, I will see you all next time. Bye-bye.