Exposing The Trick Is Really The Trick

I never heard about the U.K. magician “Dynamo” (ever) before a news headline crossed my path about how his bus levitation trick had been “exposed.”

The story linked above details how the trick was executed and then exposed by another magician. The video embedded below featured the commericially released (and I do mean “commercial”) film of the illusion featuring Dynamo apparently floating next to a bus as it drives around London.

I’m not personally new to magic.
I’ve been a fan for a long time (Hey! I was a member of  both Shari Lewis’ Dixie Cup Magic Club and Doug Henning’s magic club as a kid) I also have several friends who are professional magicians, and even co-wrote a book with one of them.

So… “duh!” A magic trick was exposed as not “really” being magic.
But what was really interesting is that no one is exposing the Advertising trick that Pepsi has pulled.  The “exposed” magic trick has won them global media coverage for a relatively simple (albeit high profile) trick.

The big trick here is the one being pulled on media companies covering this “news” when they should really be kicking their Sales teams out of the office to charge Pepsi Max for all the coverage they’re receiving:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/levitating-bus-magician-secret-revealed-150209856.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/27/levitating-magician-london-bus-trick_n_3509693.html

Of course, the true Marketing Magician would have been the media company that envisioned this concept in the beginning and approach Pepsi with the idea — and the foresight to be the only media company on the spot to record exclusive footage of this levitation “miracle.” Then the media company’s logo/credit would have most likely been promoted across all of their COMPETITORS media properties, as well as that big beautiful Pepsi Max logo. (Who’s to say that the bus couldn’t have been a delivery truck for The London Evening Standard or BBC News?)

What I can’t figure out is if Pepsi (or their agency) actually PAID the other guy to shoot down Dynamo, tricked him into doing it by manipulating his ego (hired him to do it first and then fired him for the younger and more charismatic Dynamo, leaving him to bitterly get attention by exposing the illusion), or if was just a little marketing magic by happy coincidence.

And for all you spoil-sports out there, here are a couple images of the spoiler Lorbeer in action, and one of his rig that allows him to “levitate.”