Niche Marketing
By Ian Rowland
Time once again to dip into my postbag of letters begging for advice. Today’s problem: with magic being such a crowded field these days, how can you stand out and get noticed?
This is a real problem. We live in an age where anyone can buy a magic DVD, learn a few tricks by rote and then bore friends to death at parties and/or win a major category at FISM. Similarly, anyone can learn all the tricks they want off YouTube, albeit mainly from 14 year old ‘experts’ with the performance skills of seaweed.
Given that there’s so much magic around, how can you make a name for yourself, get noticed and stand out from the crowd? The answer, my friends, is to specialise in some of the rarer and more distinctive branches of magic that are relatively under-explored. Here are my top suggestions.
1. Dove Mentalism. A very under-explored field, this, and yet one that has distinct commercial possibilities. Pioneering Belgian lady magician Fifi d’Islay (1894 – 1939) was a big hit in the music halls of the day with ‘Claude, Le Mind-Reading Dove’. People from the audience would choose an ESP symbol while Claude the dove was blindfolded, and then Claude would enigmatically fly to the correct symbol and peck at it. There was a sex scandal when it was discovered that ‘Fifi’ was really a man called Arthur. There was another when it was discovered that ‘Claude’ was actually female. The act never really recovered. Since then, dove mentalists have been few and far between, although Al Koran was developing a chicken routine just before his sad demise. The time is ripe for some enterprising young enthusiast to re-ignite the public’s passion for this very special type of magic.
2. Turnip magic. They say there’s nothing really new in magic, but this isn’t true. I’ve checked the archives as far back as March 1409, and there has never been a magic act themed entirely around turnips. Cut and restored turnips – never been done. Sawing a turnip in half – never been done. Linking Turnips – never been done. See? You come here to the Magic Boutique looking for brilliant new ideas, and you get a concept that no-one has ever used. Be thankful, go placidly from this place, develop the Turnip Act and take the world of magic by storm. As soon as you do, there will be hundreds of clips on YouTube of people claiming they invented all your Turnip illusions before you did. On reflection, maybe these video clips will appear on YouTuber. ‘YouTuber’… geddit?! See what I did there?
3. Mime Cancellation. Mime isn’t strictly magic, but it’s one of what we loosely call the ‘allied arts’, along with juggling, ventriloquism and calculating your tax return. The idea for this act is quite simple, but it’s never been done. What you do is, you tell people there’s going to be a mime show, and then you cancel the show so that no-one has to watch it. This will be very popular. More popular, in fact, than any show actually featuring a mime act.
4. Klutz Card Dropping. Ever since the Buck Twins hatched, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing guys who can execute a dazzling Reverse Synchro Dragon Sideshift Multi-Cut using only one finger, while looking very cool. Most of these guys are sickeningly good, executing moves that should only be possible for an octopus in zero G. It’s very annoying that they seldom do something normal and human, like dropping cards all over the floor or dislocating a wrist. I think this is what the public are waiting for: the ambitious would-be card twizzler who is endearingly hopeless. A brash young thing who embarks upon a series of flashy cuts and flourishes, and only manages to scatter cards on the floor as if someone turned gravity up to 11. This act would have pathos, charm and amusement value. Go for it!
5. Sheet Steel Origami. The general public aren’t very interested in origami for a good reason: it’s stupid. After all, origami is about showing that paper can be folded. Well, duh! We know that. Paper is meant to be fold-able. That’s why envelopes are smaller than sheets of paper, genius. Where’s the challenge? Where’s the news value? Now, if you were to attempt to create a flapping bird or a lotus flower from a square of tempered steel, then you’d have an act. You’d probably need welding tools, a steam hammer and an industrial flat-bed forging press, but hey, at least you’d be trying something ambitious. And it’s never been done, which is the theme of this article (in case you’d forgotten).
So there you have it. Five totally original ideas that no-one has ever used before, just waiting to catapult you to the very top of the magic and showbiz tree. Good luck!