Card To Pocket by Daniel Madison

I was gonna do a video rant about this, but because I'm sick and I lost my voice here you go with a written version.

The culprit: The new trailer for the card to pocket routine by Daniel Madison. Without further undue, here is the trailer.


Breath in and out, in and out. And repeat after me. This trailer is so flawed, so amazingly flawed. It could possibly be the worst magic trailer of all time.

Here are some points:

1. Madison says that this is usually the only card effect he ever performs! Really, so all of his other releases are rubbish? Way to start a trailer by indirectly down talking your own "achievements" in the past.

2. Could they possibly pick a worse spectator? The first lady looks like a whore of the street. In fact the whole setting is dirty and unsettling. It just feels like the neighborhood you don't wanna be in. Great, sell you product by advertising it by having it sticking out a pile of shit!

3. The audience reaction s to this supposed show stopper and reputation maker is piss poor. Yes this may be a real life reaction but this has nothing to do in an advertising video.

4. The camera doesn't know where to point the focus.

5. The routine itself (that little that is show) is horribly constructed. The spectators are instructed to do weird things and they obviously have trouble deciphering the mumblings of Daniel Madison.

The problem does not come from the incompetence of the makers of the video. They clearly know how to shoot a video and how to sell magic. This is clearly a directorial decision. Sure there are plenty of worse video out there, but the badness comes from technical inabilities or from a gross misunderstanding of either magic or marketing. If this piece of trash routine is supposed to be the crowning go to routine of Daniel Madison then I clearly wonder about his state of mind.

And what is it about the look of Daniel Madison. I get the hipster influence, but this is taking it to far. He is so fucking mainstream that his inability to understand current trends shows. The whole trailer gives me the creeps. There is some unsettling disease ridden quality to it. Who the fuck is the target audience? Kids? Hardly! Young gangsters maybe!

And name dropping your own name... that is a new low. Either that or he is a Pokemon!

Ah SEO and Google Trends

In case you don't know what a SEO text is. It's a text on your website with lot's of keywords so search engines will find you more easily. This can be done in a subtle way or in a very overt, almost childlike fashion. Like the following example.

Ellusionist actually has a very tiny link on the bottom of pretty much every page linking to a "Information Page" about David Blaine.

Here is a brief excerpt:

DID YOU KNOW?
The Card trick that landed his first ABC special was called "Strange Travelers". This is David Blaine's single favorite effect. The actual deal-closer David used for most of his professional career. It helped him close the deal on his first Network T.V. special: Street Magic.
We know you want information on Blaine and we'll give it... the real story and secrets of Blaine's life, TV specials, products, women, celebrity friends and the best places to learn how to do the street magic Blaine has become famous for. We suggest you read this page thoroughly but if you need to jump to a topic that interests you on this page, here are the jump links:

And this goes on, and on and on.

Hey Ellusionist. Do you really need that page? Are you so desperate for clicks? I looked up Ellusionist in Google Tends. The most prominent related search is "Ellusionist Torrent".

I would rather deal with that.

Is this for real?

Is Ellusionist so run out of ideas that they sell glowing wristbands? Seriously?

On their website Daniel Madison is the poster child for those. Not only is the Ellusionist logo part of the design, not the advertisement strongly points out that the wristband comes in a "Super-cool distressed container".

So we are getting something else to wear than those fucking rubber bands. We get fucking glowing wristbands.

Having the logo be part of the design is rather bad from a magic point of view. You don't want to make your audience realize that you can buy all of your magic. That kind of takes away credit. But from a marketing point of view I applaud Ellusionist for creating yet another thing that creates brand awareness. And your target audience will buy those like a cat going for valerian. The target audience is the 15-year-old. How do I know? Because the advertisement says the wristband comes in three sizes. The small one fitting the average 15-year-old.

Why the container needs any advertisement I don't know. I can only assume because they couldn't think of anything else to say.

Here is my question: Why isn't there any video of people going crazy over those wristbands? Why no street bum saying stuff like: "He's the devil man, all the tricks are nothing compared to that crazy wristband."? Then a fade to black, then the word Halo glowing in the back.

How about putting out a book for a change? Harder to sell I know, but people feel less ripped off in most cases.

Hat tip to Bob for letting me know about those things.