Miami Lights Card Deck | Presented by Flo Rida

[Adamthinks]

[hsbc]

So T11 is actually involved? Why isn't it just a regular release of theirs?

Very very strange to see this sitting at 0% funded with Theory11 and Flo Rida behind it

[kevork]

It makes me wonder if this is any indication of the economy and October busy-ness in the playing card community.

While I think it's great when people outside of the community can bring some newcomers into the hobby potentially through such collaborations, it's hard to tell when campaigns like this aren't being done merely for the cash grab.

[vasta41]

It's a $16 deck of cards. Launching a KS campaign is the perfect excuse for T11 to sell an overpriced deck, by their standards, but not release it directly on their website.

Once word gets out I'm sure funding will rise.

[jerichoholic]

That is a ridiculously high goal, good luck with that.

[see_squared]

From the campaign page "creative vision from Flo Rida, creative design from 2TON, and creative collaboration from theory11".

So 2TON + Flo Rida are the designers and campaign creators/managers. If funded, theory11 would produce the deck for them.

[vasta41]

Odd this hasn't had more advertising. Something might be fishy here.

[caniveski]

3 deck half bricks and 6 deck bricks sounds fishy !

[GandalfPC]

“With elite design, premier production and a look that begs to be dealt a hand, Miami Lights is your new favorite deck.”

The design of the cards themselves may be to blame - the claim that it “is my new favorite deck” would be more convincing if they had a gun pointed at my head.

[vasta41]

I just find it odd that a deck produced by Flo Rida and T11 is only 3% funded after about 24 hours. I also subscribe to T11's emails and am surprised I did not get a notification about this.

[RandyButterfield]

This is very interesting!

Based on years of Ad Agency experience, here’s my guess at what’s going on:

My guess is Flo Rida (with backup from Theory 11) first enlists 2TON with the task of creating a fully-custom Deck. Ad Agencies aren’t built for such a project. Say it takes 50 hours of creative work (low estimate) to create a fully-custom Deck. Even at a low Ad Agency hourly design fee of $200, that’s equal to $10,000 of billable work - per person! Based on their photos, they had a team working on this, and they had multiple creative / revision / feedback sessions. That would easily equate to $20k - $40k worth of Agency hours (and also why my Agency day job would NEVER be stupid enough to create a fully-custom Deck of Playing Cards).

I’m guessing that Theory 11 sold 2TON on the idea that a Deck with Flo Rida would be the next Beatles or Star Wars phenomenon, and everyone would share royalty payments from Target, Barnes & Noble…. for years. That type of selling could’ve lured the Agency higher ups to forego billing and gamble at the future profits.

But what happens if Theory 11 sees the final design and doesn’t think it’s good enough to release on their website and stock in retail stores?

I would estimate that they would pull out wish the Agency luck with a Kickstarter project, let them mention T11 as a producer, but T11 will not help promote the project. And either Flo Rida followed suit with Theory 11 - or who knows why he’s not promoting it? The large $50,000 goal is probably meant to recoup 2TON’s hours worth of creative work from a design team.

The funny thing is 2TON lists all over their website and IG account that they’re Marketing and Social Media experts. It doesn’t seem to be working! Or they didn’t want to sink any more money into this project, hoping Kickstarter’s built-in audience would fund it on their own.

My main design critique on it is the overall vibe. If you’re going for a fun and vibrant look, why in the hell would you have a black background all throughout? The design reminds me a lot of this older project:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ga ... ng%20cards

The Las Vegas Deck has similar neon against black background setbacks. Both projects started with their creative hands tied behind their backs. Any design that’s going for a fun and vibrant vibe should avoid using black as their most abundant color.

Again, this is just all guesses on my part. I have no idea what happened with this project.
But it’s fun to speculate!

Thanks, Randy

[vasta41]

The funny thing is 2TON lists all over their website and IG account that they’re Marketing and Social Media experts. It doesn’t seem to be working!

[PiazzaDelivery]

Say it takes 50 hours of creative work (low estimate) to create a fully-custom Deck.

I would be shocked if it took them 50 hours of work to create this design. It looks so lazy to me.

[IAmTheChin]

This is very interesting!

Based on years of Ad Agency experience, here’s my guess at what’s going on:

My guess is Flo Rida (with backup from Theory 11) first enlists 2TON with the task of creating a fully-custom Deck. Ad Agencies aren’t built for such a project. Say it takes 50 hours of creative work (low estimate) to create a fully-custom Deck. Even at a low Ad Agency hourly design fee of $200, that’s equal to $10,000 of billable work - per person! Based on their photos, they had a team working on this, and they had multiple creative / revision / feedback sessions. That would easily equate to $20k - $40k worth of Agency hours (and also why my Agency day job would NEVER be stupid enough to create a fully-custom Deck of Playing Cards).

I’m guessing that Theory 11 sold 2TON on the idea that a Deck with Flo Rida would be the next Beatles or Star Wars phenomenon, and everyone would share royalty payments from Target, Barnes & Noble…. for years. That type of selling could’ve lured the Agency higher ups to forego billing and gamble at the future profits.

But what happens if Theory 11 sees the final design and doesn’t think it’s good enough to release on their website and stock in retail stores?

I would estimate that they would pull out wish the Agency luck with a Kickstarter project, let them mention T11 as a producer, but T11 will not help promote the project. And either Flo Rida followed suit with Theory 11 - or who knows why he’s not promoting it? The large $50,000 goal is probably meant to recoup 2TON’s hours worth of creative work from a design team.

The funny thing is 2TON lists all over their website and IG account that they’re Marketing and Social Media experts. It doesn’t seem to be working! Or they didn’t want to sink any more money into this project, hoping Kickstarter’s built-in audience would fund it on their own.

My main design critique on it is the overall vibe. If you’re going for a fun and vibrant look, why in the hell would you have a black background all throughout? The design reminds me a lot of this older project:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ga ... ng%20cards

The Las Vegas Deck has similar neon against black background setbacks. Both projects started with their creative hands tied behind their backs. Any design that’s going for a fun and vibrant vibe should avoid using black as their most abundant color.

Again, this is just all guesses on my part. I have no idea what happened with this project.
But it’s fun to speculate!

Thanks, Randy

Legit one of the most interesting behind the scene posts I've read in a while! I pictured you in documentary form sitting in front of the camera telling me this lol.
I had originally just thought they were branching out with KS to pull more people like Ellusionist did with their beginner magic set and spinners several years back.

[RandyButterfield]

Legit one of the most interesting behind the scene posts I've read in a while! I pictured you in documentary form sitting in front of the camera telling me this lol.
I had originally just thought they were branching out with KS to pull more people like Ellusionist did with their beginner magic set and spinners several years back.

Hey Alex!

I’m bummed that I couldn’t make it to this year’s 52 Plus Joker. It looks like it was a blast!

Still no promo posts from T11 or Flo Rida. It’s wild that Flo Rida let them mention his name all over the project (and post photos of himself) if he wasn’t fully supporting it. I would love to be a fly on the wall at 2TON during the launch.

Thanks, Randy

[th4mo]

This is very interesting!

Based on years of Ad Agency experience, here’s my guess at what’s going on:
...
Again, this is just all guesses on my part. I have no idea what happened with this project.
But it’s fun to speculate!

Thanks, Randy

Thanks Randy, I also really enjoyed reading that! That's some pretty well-informed speculation. =)

I don't remember that Vegas deck, but you're right, they are very similar. I think that the Vegas deck is even better than this one, because they have their neon lights actually glowing and illuminating something in the background, which does seem to make the cards a bit "brighter". I'm also curious if the actual printed cards would have lived up to those renders (doubtful). Not surprising that the Vegas deck didn't fund, but I think it would take a freaking miracle for this deck to make its goal.

[Harvonsgard]

This thread is the only good thing coming from this project, lol.

[george]

This thread is the only good thing coming from this project, lol.

THIS^^ After reading Randy's theory I subscribed to the thread to keep track of the madness.

I don't think I'm interested in backing, but their "Black Out" prototype they say is available to the first 500 backers (which is to say, likely any/all backers), but I don't see any way of actually pledging for that. Has anyone here pledged for that?

[jerichoholic]

Why would Flo Rida need to resort to Kickstarter anyway? He's got millions, just produce a deck if you want one and get it out there, no need for Kickstarter, lol, big fail as it is.

[GandalfPC]

He did tweet about it on launch day - to 4.8 million followers…

“Houston we have a problem”

[Adamthinks]

I'm surprised how few sales him tweeting drew in.

[GandalfPC]

Frankly it doesn’t even seem possible

Very few comments on his posts as well - seems like his followers are 99.999% fake…

[george]

I even pledged and I'm having a blast roasting this. I feel a little guilty blasting someone else's work, but... whatever.

Not a good day for the campaign so far today (Oct 20th), having lost $15 already!

Screen Shot 2022-10-20 at 9.11.01 AM.png (46.3 KiB) Viewed 47086 times

[vasta41]

I received a promotional email from T11 the other day and it sure wasn't about this! I'm so perplexed by this project. It's bizarre. I also doubt it will help get 95% more funding but I think they'd at least get more hits if they had the words "playing cards" in the project title...

[george]

Someone commented on the KS asking what their plan is, as it's obviously not making funding. 2TON responded:

We are weighing our options. Still a few big cards to play. If we do not hit our goal, we will produce without theory11 so that our minimum investment/raise can be much smaller.

I'm trying to wrap my head around what that means to drop Theory11 to be able to lower the fundraising goal. Theory11 isn't physically producing the decks obviously.

@Randy, I'd would love to hear your thoughts about what Theory11 was contributing previously to earn their "produced by" credit, and how that could be revoked after the fact?

George

[RandyButterfield]

Someone commented on the KS asking what their plan is, as it's obviously not making funding. 2TON responded:

We are weighing our options. Still a few big cards to play. If we do not hit our goal, we will produce without theory11 so that our minimum investment/raise can be much smaller.

I'm trying to wrap my head around what that means to drop Theory11 to be able to lower the fundraising goal. Theory11 isn't physically producing the decks obviously.

@Randy, I'd would love to hear your thoughts about what Theory11 was contributing previously to earn their "produced by" credit, and how that could be revoked after the fact?

George

That’s a mystery. My guess is Theory 11 is charging a hefty fee for “producing” the Decks, when really they’re just serving as a middle man between 2TON and USPCC.

Maybe $20k for a few back-and-forth e-mails?

At the most, they get USPCC to print and ship Cards to T11, have a premium Tuck printer like Clove St send finished Tucks to them, and then T11 puts the cards in the Tucks and cello wrap them (all things that USPCC would do on there own, at extra costs). But we know from other projects that T11 sometimes do the finishing work on their own.

If your Tuck Box has any extra features (Embossing, Foil, Interior Printing…), USPCC always farms it out to a printer like Clove St. And they always charge a heavy markup for it!

All 2TON has to do is a little research and legwork, and they could drop T11 as a producer in a second.

But if Theory 11 is charging such a game changer fee for the funding goal, why aren’t they promoting Miami Lights? If I was gonna get a good payday for some e-mails and maybe some grunt work, I would definitely be trying to make sure that project came to fruition!

Thanks, Randy

[GandalfPC]

Probably a minimum quantity at T11 as well - not sure who has a low enough minimum to make this campaign work, other than MPC

[george]

Thanks Randy for chiming in! I knew that USPC could send out custom tucks to be printed. I had printed a deck with USPC ages ago and we even sent out the seals to a custom printer who could print variable data on them.

However I hadn't realized that T11 was doing the finishing work themselves (literally putting decks in boxes?). Sounds like quite the undertaking, perhaps even a partially manual process. Remove USPC's cellophane wrapped cards, assembling a flat tuck, cards into tuck, apply seal, and cellophane?
Yikes. Good on them if they can make it work where nobody else can.

As it would so happen I was looking at Cartamundi's online custom deck builder today. It's a very nicely designed web wizard thing and has a minimum of just 200 decks. Nice to see an online quoting system, as opposed to USPC's "submit a form and we'll email you". IMO. Maybe Flo-Rida and team will be checking it out!

[vasta41]

The thing I find oddest about this whole thing is the lack of promotion. Flo Rida is an A-list celebrity, is he not? If he had any desire to make his own deck, I'm sure he could afford it without a KS.
Regardless, I find it very hard to believe that he couldn't sway enough of his fans to pledge more than $2,500. Same with T11- I haven't received one word from them. Why is no one but 2ton actively promoting this deck? It's quite the conundrum, to me anyway.

[vasta41]

Per KS update (in fact, it turns out this was their FIRST and ONLY update during the entire project...):

We’ve been running our Kickstarter Miami Lights campaign for a little under a month now and while we wanted to be one of the first crowd-sourced decks produced by theory11, that unfortunately didn’t work out. We set our standards for production extremely high and that has been reflected in our funding goal.

Unfortunately, we didn’t hit our goal BUT don’t worry, the Miami Lights deck will go into production one way or another. We are revisiting our production options and considering funding sources with a goal of delivering cards in early 2023.

Stay tuned for our upcoming details!