I first started in magic about 20 years ago and I was fortunate to have a few shops in my area including Abbott's Magic Company just a short half hour drive away.

I remember going to the magic shops or magic club meetings and other magicians would show us what they are working on. Sometimes it was a sleight of hand move, a prop they are building or a routine they are working out. If I or any other magician offered ideas of suggestions to improve their project they'd just share them with little or no worries. There was a level of trust that told you that this is a fellow magician and I can share my thoughts and ideas with them openly and not have to worry about them stealing the idea. Then if that prop, routine or move is marketed it would usually include special thanks to those who helped in some way.

Also, magicians seem to put more effort in the completeness of the things they marketed then many seem to do today. They'd make sure that prop looked nice and worked properly before it wouldn't reach the shelves of magic shops. That card trick was perfected by real world performing before it was published in a book. IT wasn't uncommon for magicians to perform their creations for years before they'd even think about marketing it.

Today I personally know some magicians who came up with an idea. Made it and it was on the market with in a week. It's advertised with heavily edited videos that's put together in such a way that it could make the linking rings look like it's a brand new trick. A big hype is caused and a lot of talk goes on about it for a couple of weeks. Then stories start to surface about poorly made props, badly detailed instructions and other mistakes that came from the lack of experience and testing prior to release. So when the hype for that one dies down they have to try and market something else and the entire process starts over again.

I think one of the things that is happened is some of those who do this focus more of their energy getting themselves on sites such as elusionist then they do on getting themselves in front of spectators.

Getting yourself on those sites is a simple thing to do. Just watch what other magicians do, make a few small change to it then market it as your own. Simple enough isn't it? Don't worry about the ethics. This is about business and popularity after all. Heck, you can reach thousands of people with one 30 seconds video right?

Of course what I just said in the above paragraph isn't really what I think anyone should do. But it's what I see a lot doing. It's as if the ethics and trust is fading away. When's the last time you read anything along the lines of "Special thanks to those who helped make this trick, prop or routine a reality"?

Since this is the new to magic section of the forum and in an attempt to try and steer some away from going down this path. Here's what I suggest.

First of all. Don't worry about coming up with a new trick. IF you try to force it you'll only have one way to go and that is to steal, even if just in part, from someone else. In other words you'd end up taking something of someone elses, making a few changes and you'll be proud of yourself for that accomplishment (Which is worth being proud of). But then you'll feel it's all yours and might forget to give proper credit because you feel so strongly that it's yours. So don't worry about coming up with new magic. It'll come to you at some point out of no where.

When you do come up with something new and check to make sure it is new. Then don't market it right away. Master it first. That's the only way you'll be able to know for sure if it's ready to be marketed. You can perform a trick 100 times and all goes well then on the 101th time something goes wrong. you need to find a way to solve that problem before it can be truly mastered.

Don't limit yourself to what would be termed "Street magic" these days. In fact if you go to "Street magic" sites about 70% of the tricks you can buy there are versions of trick that have been out for years. Someone was smart enough to look "back" to find something "new". For example that biting a quarter is something I learned when I was about 20 years old (I'm now 38). Replace the needle with a string and instead of pushing it through your arm push it through your neck (What I just described is a great trick by the way but I only mention it because it illustrates my point).

So if you want to find something new then don't limit yourself to "Newly released" magic. Old magic books, magazines and even old magic props are where you're going to find your real gems. Try them, perform them and make them your own. Then be proud when you show the originator what you've done with their creation and if they don't mind you marketing it after you've mastered it. Don't forget that original version and the one responsible for it. They'll likely enjoy seeing their work improved on.

If someone tells you an idea then remember it's their idea and that they trusted you when they let you in on it. If you think up a way to make their idea work then that person is the first one you should tell about it.

I know I'm probably sounding like an old fogy but I really do see the ethics in the marketing of magic and giving credit where it's do going down hill. I think it's due in part to the fact that marketing is so much easier and faster today then it ever has been.

Ron Jaxon

This is great advice. There was a time when we needed a mentor to be able to learn what we do. Now that information is more available, mentors are not required. Your advice is exactly what I would imagine a Mentor would say. Thanks.

Solid advice. The internet has really changed things in recent years. I think a major problem is that younger magicians don't have the opportunity to meet other more experienced magicians. Brick and mortar stores are a thing of the past and organizations like IBM and SAM just can't compete with youtube for the attention of the new generation of magicians.

Sound advice good sir. The ravages of a profit-oriented monetary system fueled by a corrupt free market enterprise system has done a darn good job of eliminating a lot of the joys of the old world. Times when there was trust, and good will for men. Nowadays there's only profit and fear, it's a sad world we live in. And unfortunatly, that sadness has crept into magic. Why worry about entertainment and quality when you're making money and getting famous? It's sad..

Too many people rush to publish or "create" a trick. They think it is the path to instant fame. Very immature attitude. One reason we have so many huge egos running around in magic these days. Instead of being a lot of people who enjoy a common interest, there is some idea that we are all cut throat competitors with everyone else and unless we have published, you-tubed, created a trick, or appeared on Network TV then we have no worth as magicians.
It all seems so funny to me. I remember some great magicians, who made it to the top who didn't know a lot of magic and never published, you-tubed, created a trick or appeared on Network TV.
It isn't so much a monetary system thing, it is a narcissistic driven idea that fame is necessary for success. Unfortunately most immature minds are very self delusional about having fame or how to get it. A society addicted to celebrity. What a terrible guage of self worth.

I wrote this essay at university and thought it added to what Ron has already started:

In this essay I will be looking at the rather unique genre of advertising in the magic industry and in particular the sale and promotion of magic tricks to magicians. Advertising magic is different to most kinds of advertising because generally the products being sold are secret methods, instructions or apparatus detailing how to create the illusion of magic. This makes it near impossible to give an accurate description of what is being sold because to do so could possibly give away the secret. For many years the solution to this problem was to give a description of what the audience sees happen during the performance of the trick as a means to promote the product.

Before the launch of the Internet, a magic shop or convention was the only place to see and buy magic products. The shops were shrouded in mystery and were not advertised to the general public. Unless you were a magician and you knew where to find them, it was unlikely that you would even know they existed. Even if you did happen to stumble upon one, the front of house would usually have a few simple tricks and jokes on display and for sale. It wasn’t until the shop owner came to know you as a magician that you were invited into the back room where the real magic happened. More recently, the Internet has become the main market for selling magic tricks and many of the old brick and mortar magic shops have closed. In this essay I will look at how traditional magic advertising has evolved into what we see today.

Before the launch of the Internet, when a new magic trick came onto the market its’ release would be announced in specialist magic magazines with a brief description of how the trick appeared to an audience. The first advert I will discuss is taken from the December 2001 issue of Magic Magazine p85 and is for a trick called Salt Cups, which is produced by the Japanese company Tenyo. The ad is clear and concise. The name of the trick is in large bold letters and above the title is a sub-title giving a brief indication of what the trick does, “Magically Produce Streams of Salt”. It then shows a photograph of the product next to which is some text telling you what happens during the trick and also under what circumstances the trick would be best performed. The three stages of the trick are then explained with the help of some simple diagrams.

At first glance this looks like a rather dull ad. There is no colour used, the text is plain and simple and the product photograph is small and uninteresting yet I think the ad works to a certain extent. As a magician it tells me everything I need to know. If I have any thoughts of wanting to magically produce streams of salt, I know from first glance that this could be of interest to me. Further reading tells me everything that can be achieved if I owned this prop and where I may be able perform it. The biggest flaws in the ad are that the price of the prop and materials used in its construction are not displayed. I, and many other magicians, know from past experience with Tenyo products that they tend to be mass produced from plastic and sell in the £15-£30 price range but this is not clear from the ad.

Without focusing too much on the aesthetic of the ad I think that it is typical of other ads of its time. It is honest, as far as it can be without revealing the mechanics of the prop, and it does not try too hard to sell itself. It is used more as a shop window for potential buyers who may be on the lookout for such a product. In the past few years I think that this kind of advertising has been replaced with a more sinister/effective form of advertising and one company that I think embodies this style more than any other is the online magic store Ellusionist.

Ellusionist, or E as it is often referred to, started in 2001 and has become the market leader in terms of number of sales in the world. Their success cannot be put down to the product they are selling because it is no better and in many cases inferior, to other similar products on the market. This leads me to the conclusion that their success is down to the marketing of their brand and here I will try to examine why I think it works so well.

Firstly, E have identified that their target market are mostly teens and young adults just starting out in magic and they target all of their advertising in this direction. As David Ogilvy says, “ If you try to talk to everyone, you’re not talking directly to anyone. The broader your target, the blander your message.” P13 How to Advertise. This approach has created a very loyal customer base with E receiving over one million hits per month and boasts a forum with over seventy thousand members. How many of these members are active users is unclear but what is clear is that they play an important role in the Ellusionist marketing machine. E describes the forums as “Our Community” where each member is playing an important role not only in the success of Ellusionist but also in pushing forward the Art of Magic.

“Our community knows that magic is an art and a discipline, and requires the best training and highest quality original equipment that is only available from Ellusionist.” http://www.ellusionist.com/home
This commitment to improving magic through Es magic community is very commendable but the cynics, of which I am one, may see something else is going on. It seems to me that E are trying to create a siege mentality where its’ members try to fight a war against non-members who have not “seen the light” and would have magic reduced to nothing but simple tricks. They seem to be saying that only by buying your products from E can you (we) win the war. It reminds me of the techniques used by Saatchi and Saatchi in the Conservative election campaign of 1979 where they used “techniques to sharpen dissatisfaction with the government” p13 From Soapbox to Soundbite.

The forums are also used as a way of selling new products. The products themselves have exciting and interesting names like “Scorpion” or “Viper Deck” and months before they are released promotional teaser trailers will be posted online where you will see very little of what actually happens during the trick. The trailers are extremely well made and edited with cool music, hip graphics and awesome audience reactions. They are more like an MTV music video than an advert and they are certainly very stimulating to watch. I particularly like the way that they use an audience reaction to sell a product. Pretty young girls can be seen screaming, laughing or crying and fashionable young men can be seen commenting on how cool the magician performing is. The ads will often say that the reactions are genuine and not set-up but what I think they are really saying is, “look how cool you will become if you buy this product”. They are selling the dream of being David Blaine. Magic gives a geeky young teenager the power to become the life and soul of the party and E claim they can teach you how to do this; instantly. “I promise you that after watching the 'Street Magic,' DVD you will be able to perform incredible tricks the same day.” http://www.ellusionist.com/category/how_......ricks.do

The trailers create a real buzz on the forums with some saying that this is a “must have” and “ I can’t wait to order”. Perhaps the people making these posts truly feel that way or maybe they are E employees trying to create hype but either way they get their wish because before long they are told that they can pre-order the trick before it has been released (even before they know what the trick actually is!) and when they do pre-order, a randomly selected few may even get a little something extra thrown in for free. Once the initial buzz about a new release has died down it is usually followed up with another teaser trailer where more of the actual trick is shown. Unfortunately, these new videos can often be very misleading. In the magazine advert we discussed earlier it was made very clear what you were buying and where and when it could be performed. The teaser trailers seem to me to do the absolute opposite and in some cases what you see in the ad cannot even be done with the prop you are buying. One example of this was the release of Army of 52 where a well-known sleight was used heavily in the promotional video yet was not included in the teaching of the trick. To learn the sleight needed to perform what you had seen in the promotional video you needed to purchase a separate teaching DVD. When it was pointed out on the E forums that the move (called the Shape-shifter colour change) could in fact be learnt from many other sources including the book DeSousa’s Deceptions by Mark DeSousa, it was claimed by moderators that if people performed the Shape-shifter change without buying the teaching DVD from Ellusionist they were stealing from E and its community. The thread was then locked. This kind of approach hardly seems to fit with Ellusionist creator Brad Christiansen’s claim that, “The Ellusionist team is committed to producing original content designed to get the best audience reactions, each of our training videos has been expertly produced by the Ellusionist staff of professional magicians. Simply put, if the training video cannot effectively teach you to perform the trick and get great audience reactions, Ellusionist will not release it.” http://www.ellusionist.com/about

It seems that these kind of problems and comments have made the more experienced and professional magicians who try to uphold the self regulating code of respecting and crediting originality and intellectual copyright of creators, stay clear of Ellusionist products. Even if they wanted to use an Ellusionist trick as part of their working repertoire it would be unwise for them to do so. The tricks that E release are usually priced around $20-$40 which is easily saved with pocket money and industry sources suggest that when Ellusionist posts a new $20 trick download, they might move as many as 10,000 pieces of a popular item within a few months. http://antinomymagic.com/swiss.htm. These kinds of sales figures make it highly likely that one day a professional magician is going to come across someone who knows or who has bought the trick. That person may not be able to perform the trick to anywhere near the standard that the professional can but being at a private party and having a twelve year old comment that he can do the same tricks as the professional diminishes his standing.

This has led to a rather curious twist in magical marketing. Recently there have been comments on magic forums asking creators of magic products that seem like they have the potential to be used by professionals to raise the price in order to keep them out of the hands of the Youtube Magicians*. Many inventors of magic tricks, such as Bob Kohler, the inventor of The Ultimate Three Fly, make customers sign contracts stating that they will not perform the trick on camera for fear of other magicians learning the secret. I think that this may be the direction in which the sale of quality magic is heading. I do not think it will be too long before the old rules of the traditional magic shop return. Ellusionist style sites will become the shop front of magic, the place for the uninitiated to buy puzzles and tricks. The real inventors, the people who are into magic for the art and the love of creating, will hide away and only those who know they exist will know they exist.

2032 words

*Youtube Magician is a term used on magic forums to describe an amateur magician of limited skill and experience, who buys the latest trick, films themselves performing it and posts the result on Youtube. Often the performance is so bad that the workings or secret of the trick is exposed to those even with no knowledge of magic.


All website addresses were correct as of 16/12/08
HOW TO ADVERTISE. Kenneth Roman & Jane Maas Published by Kogan Page Limited. London. 1979.

FROM SOAPBOX TO SOUNDBITE-Martin Rosenbaum Macmillan Press Ltd. London. 1997.

Magic Magazine published by Stagewrite Publishing Inc. Las Vegas

I don't see much difference between magic ads of today and yesteryear. Sure the technologies has changed, but the idea of "selling a dream" and "selling secrets" are no different.

I'm already the "life of the party", and I don't need to "fool my friends" -most of whom are fools already!

Granted the quality of basic magic props has declined in recent years, but then again, IMHO the general quality of EVERYTHING has declined in recent years as well...

Good props/tricks ARE still available... To those who are willing to pay the price (and I'm not talking just money here either!)

I think, like gaddy says, this problem is unfortunately not restricted to the magic community. In this information age, where everyone is always conscious of what everyone else is working on, and anyone can find the worldwide best deal in seconds, there is a huge drive to beat the others to the clock, to produce things in the cheapest way possible and to save on research. (As a result though, tricks have become a lot cheaper in the last couple of years.)

As a result, your mobile phone brakes down after only 6 months, your operating system needs "security patches" every other week and you buy a new radio instead of having the old one fixed. I think the question in magic, as in all other fields, is whether we prefer quick developments and advancement, or high quality and good service.