By John Schuler

It’s believed that some 900 years ago, The Pug sat atop a throne of feathers and moss in a part of  China seldom visited by Westerners. From his perch, he would order villagers to bring him tokens of appreciation in exchange for the wisdom he passed down.

But that has little to do with this story. This story, in fact, began much later, about 1566 in Cremona, Italy, where a band of monks, for the most part, went about their typical monk lifestyles.

It is told, even to this day, that these monks were banished for dabbling in black magic. But that is far from the truth. It was not black magic that earned the monks an early departure, it was the Mystic Pug Tarot deck that they relied on to tell fortunes and make predictions for the local villagers. That’s our story.

It’s a story developed seven years ago to promote Topkote paper, a product of Marubeni Pulp and Paper out of Los Angeles. The project began as a simple Christmas card and turned into a deck of cards that demonstrated the company’s product in new and exciting ways. The company’s distributor liked our approach so much, they paid to have 25,000 decks printed and shipped across the country. A win for our client!

The deck came with 30 cards, a box and an instruction manual. Recently, we caught wind of an original deck selling for $90 on eBay.

Six months back we were sitting around eating, drinking and watching the ferries go back and forth when someone suggested we take The Pug and make a smartphone app. It sounded fun,  so we did—an office version of the Mystic Pug Tarot with characters you might run into every day at work.

Our art director, Michelle Stewart, who worked on the original Pug deck, updated the look and feel, formatting it for mobile devices. We then tweaked the instructions to bring purpose to the product as an app.

Our biggest challenge was coming up with more than 250 ways of saying, yes, no and maybe. People hid. Missed deadlines. Procrastinated. This doesn’t happen on our clients’ projects, by the way… but this was for us. We eventually landed on our list of answers and were off and running—to our developer.

About eight weeks later, The Pug came to life on our smartphones and it was glorious. We know this, because The Pug said it was glorious. Making The Pug was one thing; marketing it was something completely different.

To get the word out, we turned to our master of PR, Leslie Cohan. Leslie worked with our team to create lists within the Pug community (yes, there is a Pug community), veterinarians, tech publications and a few secret lists.

We created a custom Pug website (www.mysticpugtarot.com)  and  all our materials directed people to it, where they could read about our creation, see that it was right for them (this applies to everyone) and link to the Apple app. store to download the product. We also created a custom video that showcased the app.

Well over 14,000 editors opened and read Leslie’s press release, and the Internet was abuzz with “Pugs to predict future.”

Today, just a month after its release, The Pug is being used in 40 countries with followings in such places as Australia, Algeria and Pakistan.

When we created the Mystic Pug Tarot seven years ago, we wanted to give people something they could have fun with, interact with and get a laugh out of. Our latest rendition continues that mission.

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John Schuler is the founder/creative director of Exclaim. His business card features the new Exclaim logo and other key contact info.