Among the multitude of French cultural magazines where advertising is a priority, So Foot happens to be one of the last entities resisting this domination.
They found the perfect solution: a magazine about football, but using the topic to talk about any other subject with a different angle. At the end of the 90’s, Franck Annese, Stéphane Régy, Sylvain Hervé and Guillaume Bonamy are bored and tired with their business school, the prestigious French business school ESSEC. The four decide to create a fanzine : Shamrock, about 20 pages dedicated to the likes of Daniel Johnson, Pavement, and Elliot Smith. Three years later, the next step was logically the conception of the Sofa project, a lot more ambitious and challenging magazine bringing together intellectuals and fans of football. One day, as they are playing football with friends, they are suggested to concentrate on what they enjoy the most: as a matter of fact, well, football. Bringing an original point of view, they have no problem finding their niche in France and they go for it, with something like 450 euros in capital. Today, they distribute about 90 000 copies a month and spread out with magazines such as Doolittle (parents magazine) and the special issue Pédale!
We cannot make this story an example, but still, there is a message of hope in the way the team So Foot made their way through success. After big audit firms and TV media, Franck Annese made things his own way. Here are some principles of So Foot from which we can learn a lesson:
- Use the media as a window for other activities to strengthen independence. Hence the synergy between So Foot and So Films, an advertising films production studio.
- Do not concentrate on one subject only. No rankings and endless reports of football matches. « We’re not really interested in national teams. And thinking about it, we don’t watch more football matches than the average ». As a matter of fact, since the beginning, the magazine chooses not to employ journalists already working for other magazines. As a result: people writing with spontaneity and true motivation because they do have things to say, and do not do it because they are used to it.
- Direct consequence, keep a healthy distance with the corresponding sphere of influence. Such as: football players’ agents, clubs, institutions. Prefer the treatment of information with a different angle, comments to interviews, and then you will not care if you fall out with the PR people to cover the news anyway. This is the best way to be different from your competitors that are all dependent on the same relationships than politics specialists journalists (which is something typically French…).
- Be independent, suicidal and funny. What seems a dangerous strategy is meant to be that way (and find its best examples with the chronicles of Mark The Ugly), and becomes a major asset. This has been summed up by one of So Foot journalists, Chérif Ghemmour, with those words: “the style of So Foot, it’s a style like “yeah we know we are going to die”. This could be very well applied to the definition of style in literature, but talking about So Foot, the formula could even be changed into “looking out for trouble”. This is a very contemporary version of the old motto “expect the worse and act for the best”.
- Do not be self indulgent… when you choose to write about football through a different and wider cultural angle because in France contrary to the UK, football is considered quite trashy. If So Foot always gives the money so journalists can go and cover a story, what is important is that the story will be good in the end, and editor-in-chief Stéphane Regy is not indulgent with self-centered journalists playing on emphasis and a predictable neo-gonzo style. Same reaction about over-intellectualization; they manage to get the best of the two worlds, and to put it in a nutshell, “Football says things about the world, but after all it’s just football”.
- Unusual wage organisation. Comfort is not worth it: at So Foot, freelancing is a standard. With 40 000 euros of wages to distribute a month, chosing several freelance journalists (about thirty) who will put their focus on the magazine is better than paying full-time the only three same people to get all the job done. With this system, we guess that the magazine is likely to order an article, pay for it but in the end decide not to publish if it’s not really what was expected. This is about principles and high standards.
Sometimes, and that is a good thing, success belongs to les enfants terribles.