MTG x Avatar: The Last Airbender

Avatar: the Last Airbender is a Universes Beyond set like no other, bringing Aang and his friends’ adventures to life in TCG form. The set was a huge success, becoming the third-highest selling set in Magic history, and capped off the card game’s “strongest year ever”, up almost 60% on the year previous.

With this set came new challenges as well as new opportunities. On one hand, we sought to activate the massive, untapped potential of ATLA’s longtime audience. On the other, Magic’s recent influx of new audiences meant we had a huge group of new fans to cater to as well.  

We made sure our campaign cast a broad net without watering down any individual experiences. It ranged from cosy beginner events in London to a massive weekend pop-up event in Berlin, supported by video content and creator sendouts.

We split our focus between the UK, Germany and France.

Germany was our priority audience, and we went all out with a weekend-long pop-up at LVL Berlin. We kicked things off with an influencer-only prerelease event, mixing newer and older players to create a festive teaching atmosphere. We then opened the venue to the public, hosting demos, streamed influencer meet-and-beats, and open play areas for all to enjoy. This was met with enthusiastic support across the board, with busy demo stations and great responses. Influencer content coming from the event reached a whopping 5,000,000 organic views.

In the UK, we went smaller, but more personal. BBC 1 Radio host Jack Saunders and Bastille member Kyle Saunders worked together to host an intimate beginner’s tournament in London, coaching newbies one-on-one and walking them through the game. They were supported by new players AlicesPixels and FictionalFates, who played and attended themselves, and we even had the rare pleasure of converting a player into a content creator: Josh Hill started his Magic creator account after playing with us, and went viral with a 459K-view reel within a month.

They were also supported online by expert player PleasantKenobi, who hosted a gameplay video with fellow Magic influencers Manasplaining, Fellbrink and Miabyte. Between them, the video reached over 60k views and made a huge splash – a top-performing video on a channel that’s been running for over a decade.

Last but not least, we worked with Joueur du Grenier in France, a newer player who streamed his gameplay experience of the set in collaboration with MisterMV, supported by veteran player BestMarmotte. This really highlighted the joy of working together with new creators, and we made a great impression on an audience keen to see their favourite creators playing the game they loved!

We surpassed all benchmarks in terms of views, impressions and engagement rates. Views were a particular success, as we landed 51% ahead of our KPIs.