Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #320 - Advertising

Episode Date: April 8, 2016

Mark talks about the different kinds of advertising Magic has done over the years.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And I had to drop off something for my son at school. But his school is egregiously into my home, so you should get a full show today. Okay, so today's topic is advertising. So over the years, Magic has made a lot of ads,

and today I'm going to talk about some of them. I'm going to share some of my favorite ads, some of my least favorite ads, just talk all about sort of Magic advertising. So when I talk about advertising, I'm talking about a little more traditional advertising of actually sort of formal ads. I'll talk a little bit about some slightly less traditional advertising, but okay. So where to start? I think I'm going to start with TV commercials. Because I think we made three different sets of TV commercials, to the best of my memory. I might be forgetting one. We haven't done a lot of TV commercials in the 20-some years that Magic's existed.

We've only done a few. So let me start with my favorite TV commercials, and then I'll talk about the other ones. So my favorite TV commercials were done, we brought in an ad agency. This was back in 97, I think these commercials were, 97 or 98. So the idea was we wanted to make magic commercials. We brought in this ad company, and they really had a very humorous take on it, which I thought was my favorite, obviously. Okay, so you started by looking outside, and it was outside, like, the Wizards, and it said, Wizards of the Coast, Research and Development,

which is a sign, by the way, that we saved after the commercial, and we ended up putting it in our, right by R&D. And then when we moved across the street, we lost it somehow, so we don't know where it happened to it. But anyway, so it says, Magic, Wizards of the Coast, or no, moved across the street, we lost it somehow. So we don't know where it happened to it. But anyway, so it says Magic the Gatherer Research and Development. And you go inside, and there's all these people with lab coats on, and you know,

these scientists testing out theories. And then, okay, so there's a couple different commercials. My favorite one was, so we cut to, they're in like a two-way mirrored room where they're watching, so there's this big room and

they're talking and they say, okay so it's going to be the org versus the Raging Goblin I think. And so they say, oh real quickly, the org, the thing we did when we did with the company,

the ad agency, is we just showed them lots of magic cards. And they decided what they wanted to do. So org was, I don't even know what card was org, what set org was from. They liked org. So they decided they wanted to use org. And the idea was that the scientists

were seeing what happens when org fights raging goblin. But then one of the scientists says, oh no, Raging Goblin cold and sick. And so they look at him and they go, get Bob from accounting. And so you see Bob from accounting with his suit walk in. He's got his papers. And then you turn and see the reaction of him seeing the Org. And then the door slams behind him as Bob walks in.

And then he screams, and then you cut to the reaction of the scientists watching, obviously, Bob not winning the battle between him and the org. By the way, I think these are all online. I know we had a webpage at one point. We did Magic Arcana ads, so there's stuff on our site. You also can go on YouTube. I think if you put Magic Commercial, You'll find a lot of these. So the other one that was made at the same time. Oh, sorry. The guy who played Bob, he actually, a friend of his played magic. Bob, I guess, doesn't play magic or used to or no longer plays magic.

And so he was talking to a friend of his who played magic. And he said, oh, yeah, I did a Magic cursor back in the day. And his friend realizes that the person he knew, his actor friend, had played Bob from Accounting. And so he ended up doing an AMA

on the Magic Reddit and so he talked about how they did a lot of different versions of it. I think he even had some outtake stuff that he showed people. Like there's a version

where the reaction shot, like blood splatters across the two-way mirror, blood splatters across the two-way mirror, although it seems a little too gory, so they didn't use that version. But anyway, so it turns out Bob from Accounting, you go look on the Reddit, Magic

Reddit, he did an AMA, you can find that. Anyway, the other commercial that was made at the same time was, okay, same thing, exterior shot, you see Magic the Gathering, Wizards R&D. And they cut inside. All the R&D people are working. You know, scientists are working.

In this one, they have some weird device. And inside the device, they put a wrestler, a chainsaw, and a bunny. And then they turn on the machine. It does whatever it does. And then they turn on the machine, you know, it does whatever it does. And then it spits out, I'm not sure whether to say Kesedrix or Visedrix. So what happened was,

the card that inspired them to do this was a card called Kesedrix that was in some older set. It's a big, giant, purple bunny, but like a mean, ass-kicking bunny. Like a mean-looking bunny. I mean, like a big, bunny-like humanoid creature. And so they decided to use them.

After we made the commercials, we wanted people to be able to access these things. So in the core set, we stuck both Org, which became Trained Org, and the Kethedrix became Visidrix. So if you ever wonder why the base set has Trained Org and Visidrix, it was because of these

commercials. And anyway, the... Oh, and in the commercial they talk about, do all the experiments, are all these experiments this successful? And the scientist is like, no. And you cut to the guy delivering the mail,

and it's kind of like half man, half poodle. And they referred him as Poodle Boy. So anyway, when I made the second unset, the one that never got made, I actually made cards for both Bob from Accounting and Poodle Boy. I wrote two articles

about the unset that go unseen, about the set that didn't get made. And I think I show off the art for Bob from Accounting and Poodle Boy. The reason that we didn't end up using it was Unhinged didn't get made for many years, and by the time we made Unhinged, the commercials were kind of old hat, and we were afraid people wouldn't even know what they were.

So we didn't end up using it. Neither Baphomet Counting nor Poodle Boy made it as a card. Now, the same company that did those commercials also did two more a year later. One of them is, I mean, all of them have the same basic premise. It's Magic R&D and you see the scientists. The next one is another one where they're in a focus room where they're watching through a two-way mirror. And there's two guys playing magic. They have two, like, you know, playtesters playing magic.

You know, two teenagers, if I remember correctly, or young 20s. And one of the people watching, besides the scientist, is the org. Or not org, sorry, is Rox. And the Rox is getting mad because the player who's using him is using him incorrectly and is not using him correctly. And the Rox gets really mad.

And at some point, I think he breaks down the window and starts yelling at the players. The other one, this one I'm a little vaguer on. It's something about there's a goblin and a giant growth of goblin. I don't remember the details of this one. This one I'm a little vaguer on. It's something about there's a goblin and a giant growth of goblin. I don't remember the details of this one.

This one's the one I'm least familiar with. Anyway, they were all funny. So the take on these commercials was, I don't remember the tagline, but the idea of the commercials was just kind of fun and goofy and really played off the creatures.

The ad agency was really sort of taken by how cool the creatures looked. And so the ads were all built around having sort of a cool visual with the creature. And like I said, Org and Kezidrix and Rock, they just picked creatures they thought were cool from wherever in Magic.

And then we would bring them to the core set. Once we did them, then we put them in the core set. Although usually we had to make new versions of the cards because the cards they picked were complex. Like, we couldn't reprint the card. You know, we couldn't reprint Org or Kesedrix. So we made, like, Trained Org and Visidrix and we made a new...

Rocks might have been repeatable. We might have just reprinted Rocks. Rocks, for those that don't remember, is like kind of like a dinosaur, humanoid... Like, it's a dinosaur... Not dinosaur, humanoid, like it's a dinosaur, not dinosaur, sorry, it's a rhino, a rhinoceros, but kind of a humanoid rhinoceros. Anyway. Okay, the next series of TV commercials we did, so we had a campaign for a while called All You Need is a Brain, a Deck, and a Friend.

And it was a little more trying to get a little attitude how magic is this cool game and maybe you're not hip enough to know it's this cool game. And what we did was we made this whole ad campaign and then we went around to I don't know, hip places

like events and things. I remember there's a local thing here called Bumbershoot, which is kind of like Lollapalooza, kind of like a bunch of alternate rock bands that come and play, and then there's other sort of, you know, I think at Bumbershoot there's like maybe some X-Game things, and it's just kind of, it's aimed at sort of more, I don't know the right word, but, you know, a little more sort of like free thinking, you know.

I like these things and, you know, these things are cool. I don't know. Maybe not represented as well, but alternative stuff, sort of alternative entertainment. And so what we did is we would travel around and, like, I know we went to Bumbershoot. So what we did is we would travel around, and I know we went to Bumbershoot, and then we had this van, or like a truck, I guess, that had all the stuff in it. And we would drive around, and then they would set up this giant tent at events. And this was when Portal was out, so this was tied to Portal.

So we were advertising magic, but it was through, the idea was we'll advertise magic and then give you Portal. Because if we want you to start, we want you to start with Portal. So for those who don't remember, I did a podcast on Portal. Portal was kind of an intro magic product where we changed a bunch of things to simplify it. The idea was come play Portal first, which is like magic light. And then you can eventually transition to magic. We didn't do a great job. Portal had all sorts of problems.

I did a podcast on Portal if you want to learn more about Portal but anyway the campaign when we released Portal original Portal, the campaign with it was a brain, a deck, and a friend all you need is a brain, a deck, and a friend and the commercials the TV commercials for this campaign

had music and had like you saw whatever the target audience, you know, whatever we consider the target audience to be, those people, you know, younger, you know, 20s, college age sort of people, like hanging, doing stuff and laughing and then the narrator talks over while this music's playing and sort of like, you know, I don't remember what he says, but it's all about like, hey, you know, it's cool

doing things and here's a fun thing you can do. All you need is a brain, a deck, and a friend. Once again, you can watch these online. I think all these are on YouTube. Anyway, it was definitely a different style ad for us. It was a little more moody.

And somebody, once again, we had an ad agency that came up with a brain, a deck, and a friend. I sold my t-shirt from when I used to demo for it. Anyway, it was a very different departure from the Magic R&D take on it.

That was really humorous and played out the creatures. This, I think you might have seen people playing cards, but it really downplayed the cards. It wasn't about showing you the cards. Where the previous commercials were like, like really visually you're seeing the cards. This was more about attitude and emotion

and little less, I mean, you did see people playing, but groups of people laughing while they play at a coffee house, yeah, that kind of stuff. Oh, the other thing that was funny is, so when we started Magic Online, one of our running jokes was, because the campaign for Portal was,

all you need is a brain, a deck, and a friend. So we came up with this faux advertisement for Magic Online that was, no deck, no friend, no problem. Anyway, that's our jokey magic online. Okay, so the third thing, a series of TV commercials that I know we did is we had a campaign. This was, I don't know, four or five years ago

called Here I Rule. And it was, I don't know, sort of like, hey, you magic player, you have the power to do cool things and when you play, you control you choose what you play and what cards you have and what your deck does there's all these choices, you get to choose who you

are and in this area you rule supreme so the way the Here I Rule campaign worked was, you would see people in normal circumstances that once again sort of, I don't know, target audience sort of people. And then they would do something

and they had this moment of yay or something and then they would transition and you would see the person sort of take on attributes of a planeswalker. The one I remember, like, the kid sort of takes on the hood of Jace. But the idea is they're different ones, and, like, it was trying to, like, a little bit of sort of, I don't know,

power, you know, power investment of, like, you, you know, when you play this game, you get to be powerful and get to be in charge. And that was the Here I Rule campaign. The videos for those were a little, they weren't as comical as the first batch, but they were a little bit more motivational. And there's a little bit of graphics to them

because you had the people sort of transitioning. And so that was... They looked cool. They had a cool visual to them. Okay, so to the best of my knowledge. They had a cool visual to them. Okay. So to the best of my knowledge, those were our three television ad gamuts. I might be missing one. Oh, here's what I missed one. I missed the adult swim ones. So we had for a while, I think we did ads on adult swim, but they weren't, they were what we call slide ads, where it wasn't video, it was us showing a sequence of slides.

And those were meant to be kind of in-your-face, smart-ass. I mean, Adult Swim has a certain sensibility, and so the slide ads were definitely trying to play into that. I think we figured out that the demographics for Adult Swim overlapped our demographics by a lot. That's why we're advertising on Adult Swim. I don't remember exactly. They were smart-ass sort of ads. They were definitely sort of like, I mean, not exactly picking on magic, but definitely sort of like having fun and being a little fast and loose with sort of like talking about weird things and making jokes about them.

And it definitely was meant to be a little more edgy. Did we do any other ad campaigns? It's possible we did. Oh, here's something that most people don't know. Okay. I'm going to cough for a second. Okay. Here's something most people don't know.

We, with our... I'm not sure whether it was the Brain in the Deck and the Friend ads or it was the Comical ads, but one of the places we originally did ads was on Comedy Central, and we were the very first sponsor ever of South Park. And so, in fact, if you watch, I don't know if this is online or not,

they did a 30-second thing where it's kind of meant to be the South Park characters sort of doing a magic reference, where it was like a little, I don't know what to call it, a commercial, but it was like it was the characters from the show sort of referencing the fact that we were their sponsor

and because it was South Park they picked on us, of course and they made fun of us but we were like, okay, we're on South Park, that's okay. But anyway, one of the very first sponsors of South Park a little bit of trivia okay

okay so those are all the TV ads that I can remember so let's start talking about print ads so one of the things to remember back in the day

was that when magic first started the idea of print application was much bigger there were three magazines that were dedicated to magic there was the

Duelist magazine, which is a magazine, obviously, that I worked on, and it was internal to Wizards. There was a magazine called Inquest, and there was a magazine called Scry. There were other magazines, Shadis, and there were other smaller gaming magazines, but Inquest, Scry, and Duelist,

well, Duelist was almost all magic. I mean, it was all wizards, mostly magic. Scry was trading card games, although I have an emphasis on magic. Inquest was leaning toward trading card games and especially leaning toward magic, although it would sort of do other games

as well, but it definitely... All three of them always had magic content, had a lot of magic content. Duelist had the most magic content, all three of them always had magic content, had a lot of magic content. Duel's had the most magic content, but all of them were magic magazines. We would advertise in all of them. And so one of the things early on is we used to do a lot of print advertising. Over the years, we've sort of shifted away from that.

A, magazines have fallen off a little bit, and B, it's just more efficient now to do more banner ads and things. So I'll get there, I'll get to there a bit. But anyway, so we're talking about doing print ads. Now, the thing you have to remember early on was the people that did our advertising in the early days, back when I first got to Wizards, were not Magic players, nor had a good sense of what Magic players were. They didn't really understand our audience. And so we had

some complications with our ads early on. So here's two stories about me interacting with our ad people because they used to pull us in rooms. They used to go to R&D because they knew that they didn't know the magic audience. So they would grab us to pull us in and go, hey, what do you think?

And usually what they wanted us to do is go, hey, we love it. That's awesome. You're doing awesome work. But sometimes we didn't say that. And so, but they would commonly bring us in just because they wanted sort of R&D represented kind of the players. Like what would the players think of this? So two stories I remember of these.

One was for Alliances. So Alliances was the first set I worked on. So I, probably this was six months to a year later from when I started because, I mean, Alliances was soon to come out because we were doing advertising.

I don't even remember the ad, by the way. The ad that I pulled in to look at, it had pictures and whatever. I don't remember, the thing I do remember is they said to me, what do you think of this ad? And I remember my comment to them was,

I like it. I think it's interesting. I think the players will like it. Just one small thing I would change. And they were like, what? No, no, no. We've done a lot with this. We really think we've nailed it. This is it. And I was like, I would probably put the name of the expansion

in the ad. They had left out Alliances from the ad. It was an ad for Alliances. And they didn't put, like, they forgot the logo for the ad. They had left out Alliances from the ad. It was an ad for Alliances. And they didn't put, like, they forgot the logo for the set. And so, anyway, I thought that was funny.

Okay, the other one they pulled in, which is, it was for 5th edition. So, what happened in the early days was the two poster childs of Magic were

Sarah Angel and Herloon Minotaur. Sarah Angel, probably because it was the most popular card for quite a while. It was one of the more powerful early-day cards, and people liked it. Herloon Minotaur just had awesome art by Anson Maddox. Sarah Angel also had nice art by Doug Shuler. And Wizards had really adopted the Herloon Minotaur as being kind of like the spokesperson for Wizards.

Like, all our... Like, we had special shirts that were only staff shirts, and they had Herloon Minotaur on them. And we had jean jackets that were staff jackets. They had Herloon Minotaur on it. It really got identified as kind of being the Wizards thing. So people equated that with as if that was popular.

Because we kept making... So we kept making things with the Sarah Angel and the Herloon Miniature. In fact, there's a t-shirt we made at one point which is a Sarah Angel fighting the Herloon Miniature, but like realistically painted. Anyway, silly shirt. So anyway, in fifth edition, R&D had decided that Sarah Angel was too good. I disagreed with this. In fact, in Unglued 2,

I made fun of the fact that we pulled Sarah Angel for being too strong. There was a card I made called K Sarah Sarah. I think I showed this off in one of my articles, which was, by the way, a full art version of Sarah Angel done by Doug Shuler. He took his original art, redid it,

and made a full-scale art version of it. I keep saying one day we should do a promo of this, because it's awesome. But anyway, it was called K-Sara-Sara, and it was a 4-4 flying vigilance creature, although I probably didn't say vigilance, it was spelled out at the time,

because vigilance didn't exist. And at upkeep, you had to say, oh, this is just too good to actually see print, that I was just making fun of R&D for pulling it. But anyway, we pulled Sarah Angel, and so they pulled me in to have an ad. C-Print that I was just making fun of R&D for pulling it. But anyway, we pulled Sarah Angel and so they pulled me in to have an ad. And so Sarah Angel

was gone. Herlun Minotaur was weak, so we didn't pull it. We believe people liked it, although I think we were a little misguided. Anyway, so the ad was a letter, a postcard, I think, from Sarah Angel to Herlun Minotaur. So it says something like,

Hey, Hurley, how you doing? I'm off having a great time somewhere else and so while I'm gone, I hope you hold down the fort, because I know there's a lot of vicious monsters out there, something like that. So what they thought was, this is what they thought they had made.

Hey, popular character talking to popular character talking to popular character. You know, I have moved on for different reasons, but hey, there's lots of awesome things remaining that are pretty going to be awesome. And so you better, you know, make sure things are okay. And I said, well, here's, here's what I'm going to, let me put you in the mind of the player. Here's what the player is going to say. Hey, Let me put you in the mind of the player. Here's what the player is going to say.

Hey, I'm the card that's good, but apparently I'm not here anymore. And you, you suck. And you get to stay. So come by the set where the good cards aren't there, but the bad cards are. And I'm like, that's not how it is. So I think they pulled this ad. I don't think this ad ever sold out of day.

But it's just a good example where not quite being clued into the players would end up making things that are a little off. So one of the things in the early days that we did a lot of is we did a lot of using print ads as being a way to show off things for the first time. So what's very common is

we would show a card for the first time or we'd show a rules text for the first time. Like there were ads in which the mechanic from the set, the way you learned about it, it wasn't like a big preview article online. Because we remember, not until 2002, in the early days of Magic,

we did have a website, which you could come and see, but it wasn't really used for much content. For a little while, the duals convocation, or slash the sideboard, would do a little bit of things online. So some of the organized play occasionally did a little bit of stuff online. But as far as just everyday magic articles and things, that didn't happen until 2002. I did a whole article on this, I'm sorry, a whole podcast on this.

I was called to start up the website and try to make a content heavy website that's when for example I started writing my column latest development started kind of the magic website as you know it today really got its beginning of everyday content with articles and things

that didn't happen in 2002 so in the early days we used to use the ads as a means to sort of show things off. And so a lot of the ads were based around showing cards or showing parts of cards, like text boxes sometimes. Sometimes we would show you cards, but we wouldn't show you all the text box, so we hinted at elements of a card.

Sometimes we would show you the name of a card, but not show you what it did. Sometimes we would show you what it did, but not show you the name. I don't know. We'd mix it up. But there was a period where the ads really were kind of the equivalent of what preview articles are now,

where it was kind of like telling you some key asset, element of the set. We also sometimes would, if we bring back key cards, like, for example, during Torment and Judgment, in Torment, we brought back key cards, like, for example, during Torment and Judgment, in Torment we brought back

Sanger Vampire, and in Judgment we brought back Urnum Djinn. And the idea was, hey, look who's back! Now, it was funny at the time, because Sanger Vampire, while it was popular early on,

in the same way Holy Minotaur was popular, it wasn't particularly a strong card. I mean, it was good in Limited, but it wasn't particularly strong in Constructed. Whereas Seraph, for example, had seen Constructed play. Holy Minotaur was popular. It wasn't particularly a strong card. I mean, it was good in limited, but it wasn't particularly strong in constructed. Whereas Seraph, for example,

had seen constructed play. And Urnum Djinn was strong in constructed, but it was very much the moment of its time that it was kind of a period where creatures really sucked, and it was a creature that didn't completely suck. And because of Armageddon, Urnum Armageddon was a deck.

And what you would do is, you'd get this creature that allowed your opponent to forest walk you, essentially. Made your opponent's creature, or was it one creature? It gave at least one creature forest walk. So it allowed your opponent to be able to hit you.

Maybe all his creatures did. I think all his creatures had forest walk. So with Armageddon, what it did was, I got out this pretty big creature, somewhat cheaply. I mean, by modern standards it's not even particularly good but by old day standards it was

and then you're going to Armageddon a turn later anyway so the forest walking part wasn't really going to matter so I got out this big creature and wiped all your creatures and I just had creature advantage I was able on turn 4 to get a bigger creature than you could get on turn 4 so when I destroy all our land I'm in a better position was the idea

and the Armageddon offset the negative of the Urnumdjinn. But anyway, so Urnumdjinn wasn't as good, and Sink of Vampire wasn't as good, so we did these ads like, hey, what's exciting about this brand new set? Oh, this old thing that isn't quite that good, as you might remember.

So anyway, at some point we shifted away from sort of using ads as preview content and we started doing more look, feel kind of ads. Okay. So now I'm gonna talk about my favorite print ad, which actually was around Tempest. Um, so we were starting to do pre-constructed decks. Um, uh, Tempest was the first that had pre-constructed decks with it.

pre-constructed decks. Tempest was the first that had pre-constructed decks with it. Before that, before we had done this for Tempest, we'd never made, hey, look, it's a deck that you can just take out of the box

and it's a deck. You can just play it. You don't have to do anything. It's just a completed deck. We'd never done that before. And so we were trying to make people understand the idea of pre-constructed decks. So what the ad was, was a pizza guy, and he had to open a pizza box.

And inside the pizza box were all the raw ingredients that one would use to make a pizza. There were tomatoes. There was a block of cheese. There was, you know, a whole sausage or a whole pepperoni. There was, you know, everything you would need to make all the raw ingredients to make everything. And then the ad said, sometimes you just

don't want to make it yourself. And I don't know. I was really, really like that ad. I thought it was cute. It was kind of funny. It made its point. It really talked about why you'd want to buy the product, the pre-constructed decks. Because then at the bottom it showed the pre-constructed decks. But anyway, that is my, just from a, I don't know, from a pure, like, a concept

of execution and content and, I don't know, a beautiful thing. Okay, so in the middle, in this range, we used to make a lot of ads where we would do kind of, trying to capture the essence of the product. And a lot of our ads then, it wasn't so much about, well, actually, we went through a

phase. We tried a bunch of different things. We did a series of ads where we were being very esoteric. I don't remember, but it's kind of like magic is like a blue room filled with gold puppies. I didn't know what that meant. But we experimented, did a lot of weird ads.

Some of them were very mood-based. We're like, hey, magic's like this thing. We tried some attitude ads. In fact, I'm not even going to say what the ad is because I literally found the ad offensive. We did an ad where it was for Valentine's Day and it caused a fight in the office because we did it like many, many people, myself included, literally thought the ad was offensive and so it only went up once, but

we were doing a lot of things. I don't know but we were doing a lot of things they were trying a lot of different things they they would do ads in which there's a lot of kind of like capturing the feel and so there were a lot of ads, there was a period we went through where the ads

weren't even they weren't even they weren't even showing off the product, per se, as much as getting the attitude of the product. I wasn't a fan of this era. So here's some ads I liked. Here's some ads I didn't like. So we were trying to do Friday Night Magic ads.

And so the idea of the ad was, I think the ad campaign was nothing better to do on a Friday night, and then they would show, was it the same guy, or was it, I think it was the same guy, an employee named Dan,

I mean, a lot of times when we did advertisements, we had to shoot pictures and stuff, we'd use employees to do them, and so this was actually a guy who worked at the company. Worked in, well, anyway, it doesn't matter where he worked. Anyway,

and so the picture is of Dan, like, picking lint out of his belly button, or twiddling his thumbs, or like, he was just bored out of his mind. And the reason I disliked his ads was, like, Friday Night Magic is like, here's an awesome thing you can do, and the ad campaign sort of came down to like

hey are you really bored well guess what's better than total boredom you know and I was like could we sell our product slightly higher it's better than lint picking you know we did another ad that I

did this one get cut we had an ad at one point where it's like Friday Night Magic if you don't have a friend, one will be assigned to you. And we're like, what? Like, it definitely had, the idea it was trying to get across is you could build social

network at Friday Night Magic. But I'm like let's not call people friendless please. What are you doing? You know. And a lot of these cases it wasn't so much they were but I'm like, let's not call people friendless, please. What are you doing, you know? And a lot of these cases, it wasn't so much they were trying to insult anybody, they just weren't aware that that was the impact they were having. Okay, so eventually we sort of went through that middle period where there was, and once again, a lot of this period,

another example of kind of the feel that, you know, like we didn't add, they didn't add for Time Spiral, which was based on Escher. You know, Escher is a painter. So you've ever seen the stairs in which like, the stairs are going every which way, it's kind of optical illusion, and some people are walking on the upside downstairs, and we made this Escher stairway for Time Spiral which is set all about

recapturing the past and it was characters from all over magic walking on an Escher staircase and I remember going, why, what? I didn't understand what it had to do with anything.

It was like, and the funny thing is they did some other, the way the ads used to work was, and these are when they were made internally by our people, they would make the ad

and they'd make three versions, three different campaigns and then brand would sit in and they would show brand three different campaigns and brand would pick the campaign they liked best. So like one of the campaigns

they didn't use for Time Spiral was they did a mock-up of a, like a greatest hits album because they knew that we were doing the time shifted sheet things they didn't use for Time Spiral was they did a mock-up of a Greatest Hits album, because they knew that we were doing the time-shifted sheet, and a lot of stuff was coming back, and it was kind of like it was, imagine a Greatest Hits album

with all the art was using old magic art that was from stuff that was coming back. They ended up not using that version because once again, it was playing up not what was new about the set, but what was old about the set. And so they wanted to go with something that was a little more...

They wanted the extra stairwell thing, which I never quite got. I mean, it was visually cool looking, and it definitely made you go, huh? But yeah, there's this middle range where there's the attitude ads. I never quite got the attitude ads.

So eventually what happened was Magic kind of went online. Like, print advertising and magazines. First off, you know, the Duelist stopped printing, and Inquest stopped printing, and Scrag. Just the Magic magazines, the place we would go, stopped printing. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Quick story, quick story. So, one little story I meant to tell. Before I came to Wizards, I made a book of magic puzzles.

I was the magic puzzle columnist in the duelist. It was the most successful column in the duelist, and they decided, we're going to make a book out of the puzzles. So they commissioned me to make puzzles. I made, I think I made a hundred puzzles, thinking we'd make two books. When originally we were going to make one book out of the puzzles. So they commissioned me to make puzzles. I made, I think I made 100 puzzles, thinking we'd make two books. Well, originally we were going to make one book of 100 puzzles. We then decided that was too many puzzles.

So we decided we were going to do two books. I made 50 of them in the first book. We ended up not making the second book. And then I used the puzzles in my magazines and stuff. But anyway, the puzzle book had an ad, which we made. And so whenever I made a puzzle it always would say your opponent is and then I explain the situation that you're in

and usually I would name it after people I knew they were friends of mine or people working at Wizards or whatever and so my puzzles always started with your opponent is so the ad started with your opponent is Mark Rosewater, they had a picture of me and then there was something that showed the book cover and said like

there was a warning on it like, warning, this book may cause irritation, frustration, and the desire to hurl it across the room. And it was a very tongue in cheek ad sort of saying like, you know, these puzzles they'll be hard. And so they put the ad in the normal places we put

ads, but they put an ad in Games Magazine and I had a bunch of friends that did not play Magic, but liked Games Magazine. And when I showed up in Games Magazine, that was like the high point of the coolness. That was like all of a sudden, they're like, oh my goodness, you're in Games Magazine. So I remember that ad.

I actually, where did I put that? I had that ad hanging up on my desk for a long time just because it was my little, your opponent is Mark Rosewater. Anyway, I thought it was a fun ad. Okay. So, uh, print, print advertising for us really went away. We started doing a lot more of, um, advertising through banners, um, and doing advertising, uh, through social media. Like a lot of what we do now is more geared to how social media functions rather than sort of old school advertising. You know, we have a Facebook page and a Tumblr page and a Twitter page and, you know, a Twitter handle.

And, you know, we do a lot more content where we're sort of doing more innovative content that interacts with people. On some level, a lot of the stuff I do, my comic and my head-to-head, a lot of that is advertising-ish. Like my comics, for example, whenever we have a new set, I make jokes about the new set, for example. I've just changed the focus of, okay, hey, we're now on this world. Let's make jokes about this world and this place. And so I always sort of focus it. But we don't, we don't,

I mean, we definitely have campaigns nowadays and occasionally we'll have taglines and things. But those are the kind of things we'll use

in like, on like, bumpers and things online. Oh, the one thing I didn't talk about, by the way, this is going back

way, way early, but I have a little bit of time before I get to work. If you want to get in a real treat, I'm going to tell you, okay, so you've got to go to Google and search for Magic the Gathering Ice Age video. So what happened was, early in the company,

this is before we sort of were big enough they were going out and getting independent ad agencies, we decided to make a video to promote Ice Age. And the company had a thing called Theater Alchemy, which was we had made costume for a whole bunch of characters, and then people were trained how to sort of be the character, and then they would dress up and go to conventions. And we had Herlin Minotaur, obviously, and Sarah Angel.

We had the guy from the original Counterspell, the Mark Poole Drew. We had Lim Dool we had we had a bunch of maybe like 8 to 10 characters and the idea was that we used to do a lot of conventions we'd go to conventions all the time so we'd always send a couple members of Theater of Alchemy

to conventions and they would dress up like magic characters and go around and act like magic characters so anyway they wanted to do a promotional video, so the theater alchemy people said, okay, we'll do it. We'll make this thing. And so they wrote the story, and they wrote all the dialogue. And while the theater

alchemy people did a good job of making cool costumes, and they pretty much stayed in character, not the strongest of writers. And so the way I describe not the strongest of writers. And so, the way I describe the Ice Age video is

if advertising is snack food, it is the Cheetos of advertising. It is quite entertaining. It is very cheesy. And it doesn't have much substance to it. But it is, you will enjoy it. So if you've never seen it,

it is super, super cheesy. Walk in understanding that. That this is not the pinnacle of us advertising. I mean, like, go look at, like, the Bob from Maconing ads and the Poodle Boy ads. That's like, you know, kind of actual, like, wow, this was a really awesome commercial. The Ice Age video was more, it's more historical like, wow, this was a really awesome commercial. The Ice Age video

was more, it's more historical and quaint, but it is fun to watch. It is a hoot to watch. In fact, one of the things I might do at some point is I might do a podcast of cool things to watch on YouTube, but that's for another day. Anyway,

I'm almost to work, so let me see. Did I hit all the different things I wanted to talk about? I think I hit the major things. So kind of my wrap-up about advertising, because today was definitely a fun day, was it is neat to watch the many different ways we've tried to connect with the public.

And like I said, we've gone every route from, hey, magic is cool, to, hey, it's empowering, to, hey, it's fun, to, hey, the creatures are neat, to, to, it's, I can't even explain it to you.

It's just weird. You know, we've done all sorts of crazy different advertisements and it's been interesting to see. I know that magic is a very interesting brand to sell

it definitely has a lot of elements to it and then we went through phases there were phases where the advertising was all about the game and there were phases where like we wouldn't mention in the ad that it was a card game we had a couple things like that it's cool, it's it, Magic

we wouldn't show the cards you do understand when they come to play the game that there are going to be cards there. Like, what are we hiding people from? So, but once again, there are also whole periods where, like, advertising was all about the cards. It's like, cards, cards, cards. New mechanics, you know. So, we went through all sorts of interesting phases and did lots of cool and different things. And some of our advertising was just awesome, awesome advertising that, like, to this day

stands up as just really cool. Instead of advertising, not the best advertising. I mean, I was trying today to show the highs and lows. Like, we had, we have had really, truly brilliant, awesome, amazing advertisements. And we've had some kind of embarrassing, I'd rather not talk about them, advertisements. kind of embarrassing. I'd rather not talk about the advertisements. And so anyway, that is, I mean, sort of me

in a nutshell walking through lots of magic advertising. One of the things I love to do in this podcast is just touch upon different things people might not know. My hope today is I really, really hope you go to YouTube or go to our website. I think we collected these in Arcana, but

I want you to go to YouTube or Arcana and just have a chance to watch these commercials. Really, if I can do nothing else than inspire you to watch them, I really think it'll be interesting to see. It's a nice little trip through history of watching kind of how we represent the brand and how at different times,

it's just very different than other times. I think all of our television advertising each did something cool. Some of them, I think, were our television advertising each did something cool. Some of them, I think, were more effective than others, but I think each of them tried selling magic in a very different way. Oh, the one thing I didn't even get to. There also were a lot of videos we made over the years

that were not on TV, but we put them up online. I didn't even get to WooBurg or any of that stuff. Okay, probably at some point I'll do a podcast on cool YouTube things. And then I'll introduce you to Wooberg, the puppet that is Wooberg. Another little advertising thing we tried.

But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed my trip through magic advertising. And I'm now parked in my space, so we all know what that means. It means instead of me talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.