The Netflix magician says the lost art of magic is coming back because people crave something real. Here’s what his audiences buy, and how your brand runs the same play.
Justin Willman. Photo: Getty Images
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A week before Justin Willman sat down with me for Behind the Brand, a stranger cornered him with a theory about his magic career. The man kept pushing one idea. “Come on, you do this just to make people feel stupid, right?”
Willman didn’t get the logic. He has fooled people for a living since he was a teenager. Then he traced the idea back to the source.
“Our constant feed is something the other people are wrong, you’re the smart one, you are the only sane one in this group,” he told me. “And we’re all being told that.”
Magic runs in the other direction. “It makes you feel like an untainted human again,” he said. “You don’t know everything. And we don’t. But we like to be told we do, and our phones help us think we know everything.”
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His answer holds a lesson for every marketer fighting for attention on a screen.
Why magic makes us feel like “untainted humans” again
At Goodbrain, I push founders on two questions. The first belongs to the people who run the company. What business are you really in? The second belongs to the customer. What am I really buying?
One looks from the inside out. The other looks from the outside in. Most companies answer the first. Few answer the second, and the second decides whether people pay full price or wait for a discount.