Blind Drive – Citroen Brand Activation

THE CRAZIEST OR PERHAPS PSYCHOTIC PSYCHOLOGICAL STUNTS I DO!

I’m Russell Fox, also known as Magician Insane. Magician, Mentalist & Psychological Illusionist.

While working, touring and performing in theatre, I am one of very few South African magicians who would attempt the psychological stunts that I’ve pulled off.

A while ago, I promised my Insanitarians that I would write about the crazy or Psychotic Magic stunts I do. Though challenging, with the huge amounts of preparation, work and research my team and I invest into making these Psychological Stunts happen – it pays off every time..

THE FIRST STUNT

The first Psychological Stunt I ever did, was while on a tour called “The Shift” with Carlo Mc Farlane. We were in a beautiful little town called Richards bay on the coast of Kwazulu Natal, just outside of Durban, South Africa.

What a great experience and this was my first Road Show too! We needed to create “buzz” in the little town to attract the public. A psychological publicity stunt was just the thing to make it happen.

I spoke to our publicist for the tour, he hopped on the phone and contacted Citroen. Just like that, we had a publicity stunt for ourselves and a thrilling brand activation for Citroen.

CONTEXT

To explain the power of a psychological publicity Stunt, it aims to draw a lot of attention for brand activation and brand awareness – and it did! We appeared on local radio stations, television shows, newspapers and more. The hype drew massive attention from the public to the Psychological Stunt show. Tickets were sold out fast!

These stunts are not designed to just be something we as magicians, mentalists or illusionists do, they serve a greater purpose, to attract attention and awareness where we need them to.

Since then, I have done many more stunts, including The Glass Walker Challenge where I broke a World Record.

THE STUNT

At this point, you’re wondering, what on earth that stunt was. Well, I drove a beautiful Citroën blindfolded. Not just on my own, I had the presence of a Richards Bay Super Model in the car with me to freak the living daylights out of everyone and the fun began.

See video above

ON A MOTORCYCLE

Being a Magician, Mentalist and Illusionist requires a lot of dedication, huge amounts of work, travel and a lot of crazy ideas. My next psychological stunt was a blind drive again, but this time it was a Live Blind Drive.

What did that require? Well, for this I wanted to drive my motorcycle. She is a stunner known as “Tha Heist” by a company in the USA called “Cleveland Cyclewerks. She is a 250cc Bobber I bought for the purpose of doing stunts.

NO SOUND

We filmed the psychological stunt, but sadly the sound from the main camera that was used in the drive was off. We had no sound for the video, but below are some images of the stunt. It was a huge success even though I’ll never do that on a busy highway again!

It took two years of planning and discovering how I would go about making this crazy stunt possible, knowing I would be driving completely Blind on a national road with other people driving to where ever they were heading.

Two years of intense planning and study to make a 4min blind drive happen, so now you know the amount of work and effort that goes into this.

THE GLASS WALKER CHALLENGE

My third and biggest Magic or Mentalism psychological stunt yet was to raise funds for a local South African NPO called Nosh For Josh. These guys work hard creating awareness and helping families and people living with Autism. My background of schooling and life was right up that ally. With me being their Brand Ambassador I knew I wanted to do something

I committed to walking on a bed of broken glass for 32 km in 29 hours but ended up doing 36,8 km in the 29 hours I had committed to. This was the most painful and enduring stunt I had ever achieved and one I am super proud of.

I have a short book launching very soon about the entire experience, the challenges I went through mentally, physically and emotionally in those 29 hours to achieve the world record, and how I endured the pain I went through to reach this goal.

My journey as a Magician, Mentalist and Illusionist living in a small city, Cape Town, South Africa has been an extraordinary experience for me thus far and from the looks of things is only going to get a lot more interesting.