This is the third and final part of my review of the Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast branded company podcast:

Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work

Over the two previous posts I covered these four lessons from the show:

1. Reveal how the product is made
2. Interact with the wider community
3. Be candid about mistakes
4. Don’t worry about having a simple recording setup

Today I’ll cover the final two lessons:

1. Stick with it long term
2. Adapt when circumstances change

It’s quite a history that the show has accumulated - it has released well over 1,100 episodes and going strong. One of the most important pre-requisites for getting traction with a new podcast in general, and a branded one in particular, is to make the commitment to stick with it through the early stages. It’s of course a different challenge to keep coming up with new topics many hundreds of episodes in. Mark Rosewater uses a combination of the regular product release schedule to generate some of his topics, he has a wide range of recurring segments and themes that he can come back to, and uses his weekly article and other touchpoints to generate additional ideas. You have to be creative and resourceful to keep the podcast topics flowing with this volume of output.

Finally, the biggest change to Drive to Work’s format came like many others of the past few years with the unanticipated shift to working exclusively from home. Mark Rosewater turned that disruption to the fundamental recording-while-driving process and supplemented his regular monologues with guest interviews that he only rarely could do before (when he actually picked up the fellow employees he wanted to interview so they could drive to work together). The change didn’t just keep the show afloat, it actually enriched the variety of topics. Mark, like many of us, continues to have a hybrid working schedule, and thus the show has settled into a nice rhythm of many of the solo episodes but a steady stream of interviews and other creative formats as well.

Overall, Drive to Work is essentially the singular encapsulation of my unique combination of interests - my specific hobby, as an entertaining podcast, intersecting with my writing about the branded segment of the industry. I’m so glad to finally share it as one of my reviews!