Magic as a Service

Wouldn't it be cool if you could make a simple API call and immediately add drops of magic to your boring, commoditized product? Just add the link to the developer documentation to your engineering team's Jira backlog. It means you can skip the whole product management, user experience, brand guidelines, and reviews that slow down your company. It results in improved release velocity and improved user love.

But what is the magic? Does Disney's Parks & Experiences offer an API to insert their magic into your product? Darth Vader shows up on your 404 page..."You shall not pass", and WALL-E on your under-construction page "waaaaallllleeeeeee".

Simple examples but it's unlikely that's the solution. It's not embedded into your product itself, whether that's a digital or physical product.

And it probably won't take the form of an API call because that makes it too generic. Sure, call ChatGPT for storytime answers in text, image, or video but everyone else has access to the same tool. So the end game of that is yet another me-too experience.

This means the only way you will have truly differentiated experiences for customers is by calling in the Avengers team, who are experts at Magic. It's a service, paid one time or monthly. And you lock them in place by paying for their time, which means you're at a competitive advantage for a cornered resource.

Jony Ive created a company called LoveFrom that offers Magic as a Service. Their website's animated typography is a wink to the magic they can produce. You trust them because Jony made popular Apple products. But so far they haven't released a true product. Sure, there are rumors of a ChatGPT phone but is that really magic? Can't you already load ChatGPT's website on the iPhone?

We think differently over at our studio.

We think in terms of world-building, character design, gaming, brand partnerships, and roll-up strategies combining many emerging technologies that compound distribution points, with mathematically pure incentive systems that reinforce behavior aligned with values system. Our building blocks are entire companies and industries, the totality of the Internet, cultural dynamics that shape the species, and magic moments like when Tarzan Touches an iPhone.

The sum of the parts is 10x better because, as a species, humans seek positive reinforcement at every step, a warm feeling of safety and goodness, the achievement of loving interactions, and the novelty of something new that excites every connection in their biological intelligence connectome.

The future will look nothing like the past, and you'll know you've achieved it when the solution becomes obvious in hindsight.

The number of people with this experience working on every emerging technology, entertainment brand, product, and consumer brand and with companies large and small is microscopically small. But that's what it takes to create a single, fleeting moment of magic.

And once you experience it as a customer, you forever feel whole because of it, a sense of wonderment severely lacking from the age we live in, and a sense of emptiness when you can't feel that magic again. So the search continues to re-engage in that feeling and experience that world for another fleeting moment.

Unless, of course, you can find a way to live within that world for longer periods of time—from seconds to minutes to hours to days to weeks, months, and years.

The product roadmap is extending the length of the feeling. Safety, warmth, wholeness, goodness, trust, excitement, creation, longevity, helping, giving, receiving, together.

This world is possible, and it's getting closer.

Trust the process and the team. We'll build the boat and fill it with friends to take us to new shores.

Magic isn't a service. It's a priority.

Have a magical day.

--Sean