I Wanted To Write About NFTs This Week…

Those viral non-fungible-tokens that are selling for millions and may just save the magic industry altogether. Goddamit. I suppose I’ll write about those next week.

Why wait? Well, this week, a big fat boat got stuck in a canal, and amongst the press and Twitter storm surrounding said boat was a familiar name—Uri Geller.

That’s right, that clever spoon-bending mentalist demonstrated his greatest ability this week—to get free press. Not only did he manage to steer attention away from such a big story, but in doing so over his career, Uri’s got millions of dollars worth of press.

Here’s what happened, a look at magicians’ rich history with publicity stunts.

What is a Publicity Stunt?

Something unusual that is done to attract people's attention to a particular person, product, or organization.

Magicians have always been brilliant at getting press attention. More so than any other form of entertainer. Here’s the thing, getting free press coverage is not hard, especially if you’re already a celebrity. We’ve all seen big headlines when famous celebs drop some gossip or pretend they’re about to sign up for OnlyFans.

But it’s still possible without celebrity status. A magician friend of mine, Archie Manners, sent pebbles to influencers and pretended they were chunks of the moon. He got free press for that stunt and many stunts since then. He’s rather good at creating newsworthy headlines. Pranking influencers with “moonrock” gives the press a great headline, a good thumbnail and a conversation around what influencers are willing to promote with zero due-diligence.

Magic and Publicity Stunts

I think perhaps the reason magicians are so well suited to publicity stunts is two-fold. The big reason is that this is what magicians do; they capture your attention, imagination, and they tell great stories.

The second is that some of the best publicity stunts magicians attempt have an absolute zero-budget, meaning they cost very little to pull off, so magicians can have many stabs at them.

There are also quite a few readily available proven and tested publicity stunts any magician can do, anywhere. Predict the outcome of a football match or the lottery, perform an escape with local police handcuffs or perform a blindfold-drive with a local reporter.