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Welcome back, readers! Today's article is another that's more directed towards stores but hopefully useful to anyone. I'd like to discuss how to build a brand for your Magic store.
First, a little exercise on the importance of branding overall. Do you know what company this shape is associated with?
What about this one?
There are precious few people who won't immediately recognize these logos. The reason is that both Coca-Cola and McDonald's have been extremely successful with their branding.
Our brains love to make connections between things. These companies have managed to link their logos in the public's mind with their product. This omnipresent association helps both companies remain incredibly successful and generate massive amounts of profits.
Note that Coke and McDonald's have the benefit of a distinct product line that's all their own. In the Magic finance world, things can be much more challenging as we're not selling a unique product.
Luckily, we're not alone on that front. Odds are you recognize the following three logos:
These logos belong respectively to Bank of America, Chase Bank and Wells Fargo. These companies might not be as well known as Coke and McDonald's, but their logos still rank as some of the most recognizable out there.
Like Magic stores, banks all offer the exact same thing--access to credit and a place to store money. In that regard each is equally as capable as the next, and yet some banks grow and increase their market share while others flounder and go under.
When you don't have a unique product or service to offer, you must seek other ways to differentiate yourself. This holds true for dealing in Magic: The Gathering singles or sealed product. With the internet, all your customers have easy access to any number of locations selling the same product. You need to set yourself apart from the competition one way or another, and you need your customers to know who you are.
Strategies for Magic Branding
One of the easiest ways to improve your brand identity is to make sure your store name appears on every order you sell.
With online purchases this can be a business card, or an invoice with the company logo at the top. This helps customers remember who sold them the product. (Make sure you've provided great customer service, lest they remember your business as a place to avoid!)
This becomes easier if you sell off your own site instead of an online marketplace (TCG Player, Amazon, eBay). Another benefit of this strategy is reduced fees per transaction.
This is why many online retailers now include some form of discount code on their business cards. While it reduces the overall cost to the consumer, it typically increases the profit margin for the store as well, by eliminating the middle man.
Free Swag
Another great way to increase brand identity is through t-shirts, playmats, tokens, or anything else likely to appear in public at tournaments. While this is more expensive than throwing business cards in an envelope, it's a more effective way to grow your brand.
After all, if the only people who see your logo are already customers, you haven't gotten very far. But when your brand finds its way on camera, you reach countless other potential customers.
I've even heard of one store (Aethergames, owned by QS Insider Kyle Lopez) who gave out shirts at a GP and actually paid players who got on camera wearing it (GP New Jersey, as I recall.) This is a great strategy and really encourages players to actively advertise your brand. I don't know if he even had to pay anyone at all, but tons of people were wearing his shirt just in case.
The biggest issue with something like t-shirts is they can still cost quite a bit of money. Even a large order with a simple design will likely run you $3-4 per shirt. That might not sound like a lot, but if you end up giving out 400 shirts, that's $1200-$1600--certainly not chump change to a small business.
Producing Content
Providing free content online like streamed games or webisodes is a great way to get your brand name out there. It's also an effective way to bring new customers into your store (after all, people love making it on camera.)
The cost of setting this up isn't nearly as much as you might think. Webcams can be purchased for as little at $7-$8. The only other major expense for streaming is some sort of frame to sit over the game table to view downward. This will cost you whatever materials you choose for said frame and the time to build it.
Twitch is the most popular streaming service in the US, and making an account is free. Another beautiful thing about Twitch is if you manage to attract enough viewers, the stream itself will actually generate revenue (although I wouldn't count on this one too much).
If you go this route, you might want to look into playmats or a table mat with your company name on it. This way every single game played on camera reminds the viewer who is providing the content.
For webisodes, make sure a store banner or sign appears prominently in every video you release. The best place for this is probably the background of the default camera angle, but if you're ambitious you could try to sneak it into every shot.
Online Presence
Lastly, the most obvious, and freest, way to brand yourself is to advertise on social media. The better you can maintain your online presence, the easier it will be for old customers to stay invested and new customers to find you.
Start with a Facebook page and a Twitter handle. This will provide your local customers with the latest up-to-date information about your store at no cost.
On Facebook, it's important that you create a company Page, rather than just a series of Events. Pages are more visible and provide one central location for your customers to find information. They can also host Events as sub-pages, so you can still announce your event schedule every week this way.
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These are just a few of the methods I've heard of for Magic stores to build their brand. There are many ways you can get creative to make sure your name is out there on the minds of Magic players and consumers.
If you have other ideas for how to market Magic stores, definitely post them in the comments. I'm interested to hear what other people are doing in this area. Hopefully I can revisit the topic later and describe some more in-depth approaches to branding.
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Dorks (permanent acceleration): Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch, and Utopia Sprawl give the Blood Moon deck a few options for permanent acceleration. Dork effects help us splash colors, enabling greedy bombs like Siege Rhino. Spare dorks can at least chump block or carry Swords. Noble Hierarch even speeds up our clock!
Rituals (one-time acceleration): Simian Spirit Guide, Pyretic Ritual, and Desperate Ritual all provide one-time acceleration at instant speed. The main upside of ritual effects is their explosiveness. I've won games by going Forest, exile Simian Spirit Guide, cast Pyretic Ritual, Blood Moon. Moon needs to come down early to do work, and rituals directly support that plan. They also let us do "something else" on turn-one and still resolve a three-drop on turn two. We can spend our first turn Bolting a threat, or Looting into an optimal turn-two play, and our second playing Desperate Ritual, Goblin Rabblemaster.
Blood Moon games tend to go long. Spending all our resources on a first-turn Blood Moon forces us to draw into lands and business, and while the Moon buys us some time, opponents may still get to some sort of late game of their own. It's more important to grow Tarmogoyf really big in ritual builds than in dork ones, since we don't have the late-game staying power of Huntmaster of the Fells or Siege Rhino.
Wilt correctly maxes out on Blood Moon, and adds Eidolon of the Great Revel and Burning-Tree Shaman to his permanent disruption package. (With all the Bolt targets to distract from it, Magus of the Moon is sorely missed in this list.) Eidolon pressures low-curve decks like Bogles, Burn, Storm, and Delver, while Burning-Tree keeps Twin from its combo. Both psuedo-lock pieces double as threats. Phyrexian Metamorph does, too, copying the best lock piece Wilt resolves (or the inordinate Tarmogoyf his opponent does).
Magus of the Moon makes an appearance here, all but guaranteeing a Moon effect every game. Combined with Goblin Rabblemaster and Blood Moon itself, Magus gives Igarashi 10 backbreaking plays off a ritual. In such a Bolt-dominated format, I'm surprised at Igarashi's success with Rabblemaster and Magus, the only Boltable creatures in his deck (other than Simian Spirit Guide). Still, when opponents don't have a Lightning Bolt, these threats mean business, especially backed by Ghor-Clan Rampager. You can't sneeze at a 12/13, trampling Tarmogoyf, and Igarashi's nine reach effects help end games after a massive attack.
The same applies to MutaMoon. Opponents only have so many Lightning Bolts at their disposal. By the time they find a second one, Rabblemaster will have made us a few Goblin tokens to chip at opponents, or to chump their racing beaters as Tarmogoyf attacks them. We may even have drawn a second Growth by then. Similarly, protecting Magus for a turn gives us time to find an actual Blood Moon and put opponents off colors for good.
originally ran a pair of Huntmaster of the Fells in this deck. Huntmaster gives us a way to recover once we resolve Blood Moon if opponents have been pressuring us, and he provides two bodies against grindy strategies. He can also carry games on his own against weenie decks like Soul Sisters, and can be saved from Bolts with Mutagenic Growth. Unfortunately, four mana is a lot in a Faithless Looting/Pyretic Ritual deck, and Huntmaster didn't solve the problem of Rabblemasters (and occasionally, Goyfs) getting walled. I finally cut the Huntmasters and a land for three Ghor-Clan Rampager, which trumps Huntmaster against Goyf decks and strategies with more inevitability than us, including Twin and Tron. Huntmaster still smashes small aggro decks and may have a home in this deck's future.
Kitchen Finks is at its best when trading with small creatures, leaving us up a card and up life. Most of the spells it trades with cost less than two mana (Goblin Guide, Merfolk without Islandwalk, Snapcaster Mage, Memnite) so its three CMC can often be a little awkward. As a result, Kitchen Finks is often seen alongside green acceleration like Birds of Paradise and Noble Hierarch (like in my 
Before, Dispel was a liability against the plethora of creature decks in the format, but today even creature-heavy lists like Elves and Naya contain great targets like Collected Company. Similar to Tarmogoyf, delve creatures force opponents to keep in removal after board to interact (as 4/5’s and 5/5’s are just a little too big), which walks them right into our Dispels. Playing as Grixis, I've won many gameson the spot when I countered a Collected Company, or Path to Exile aimed at my Gurmag Roadblock, for one blue mana. Dispel is still excellent in the blue mirrors, and great against combo as well. Any deck with a or tempo element can appreciate the cheap interaction it provides (Grixis Delver/Control/Twin, Merfolk, Knightfall) and even pure combo and control can use it as well (though Jeskai and U/W often opt for the more versatile Negate instead).
When Twin was dominating Modern, Jund turned to Slaughter Pact to help fight the archetype, though it proved largely unnecessary as Liliana/Thoughtseize/Terminate were often good enough. It does fine work against Amulet Bloom, and is passable against other creature decks, assuming we build to mitigate its downside. Decks that pack things to do that don’t require mana, like drawing cards with Dark Confidant or activating abilities of planeswalkers, can “work around” the lost mana that comes with Slaughter Pact, but the real trick is to pair the free spell with a strategy that can use the tempo advantage.
Most decks in the format have difficulty killing everything, which makes Worship a pretty resilient soft-lock in many matchups. Burn can’t beat it outside of a Destructive Revelry, which can be non-intuitive to bring in against the Worship deck, depending on what we’re playing. Decks like Affinity and Collected Company really have no hope. We just have to kill Affinity’s Inkmoth Nexus’ and dodge Qasali Pridemage or similar effects against the Company decks. Even Grixis Control has trouble beating it, as it is impossible for them to remove it once it resolves (now that the latest Grixis list has moved away from Cryptic Command). Worship punishes the lack of sweepers in the format and takes advantage of an over-reliance on cheap, interactive one-for-one removal to fight Goblin Guide and Deceiver Exarch. Splashy, unique enchantments like this can take a stale metagame by surprise (as Bitterblossom was doing a few months ago) and I’m sure there are other gems like Worship out there just waiting to be exploited.
For those that do, however, Gut Shot is really great right now. Shooting down Birds of Paradise, Glistener Elf, Delver of Secrets, Dark Confidant, Signal Pest and others on turn one, Gut Shot has no shortage of targets in Modern. I like Gut Shot for many of the same reasons why I like Slaughter Pact, so we can think of it as a really narrow Slaughter Pact without the drawback (and committal to black). As I said earlier, any deck can play it, but if we’re putting cards like Gut Shot in our deck we really need to work to get some “extra value”. Young Pyromancer and Monastery Mentor help, as does Abbot of Keral Keep (not just for the prowess, but also for an extra free spell we can cast off our Abbot flip). I was really impressed with Patrick Chapin’s Temur Prowess list from GP Oklahoma City (so impressed I did a video series on it 
