Thoughts About Finding A Way, Even When It Seems Impossible.
And a good article about Venezia FC.
Happy Wednesday y’all —
Another week has gone by and, once again, I haven’t been able to properly sit down and put my thoughts together. As you may imagine, that dirty sense of inadequacy that cripples us (creatives? emotional beings?) when we most need to be thinking straight has completely taken me over.
When this happens, I have the habit to pick a random old text and re-read it for motivation. Usually, I am mind-blown by my own ability to tame words and turn them into beautifully written essays. *Clears throat* Self-referential much? However, today this routine completely backfired.
I decided to revel in my first newsletter of 2023 and immediately froze when I realized that, not even halfway through the year, I have already wrecked my plan to take this space up a notch. *Gasps*
Shame on me.
Still, because I actively chose to stop negativity from kneecapping the rest of my day/week/month, I dusted my shoulders off and focused on the positives. I wrote 75 essays so far, more than I ever consecutively wrote in my life. That’s something to celebrate!
”What does that have to do with us, Naomi?” You may rightfully ask as you skim through these lines. “We crave MORE of your wisdom and immersive storytelling!”, you may continue. (Yes, this is how I imagine readers to be when it comes to my writing.)
It has everything to do with you because if I wanted to write in secret, I’d do so in the privacy of my cutesy journal. Instead, for the past two years, I have been providing numerous reasons to reflect and relate. It’s not me who says this, the comments and the private messages I receive week after week are my witness.
After spending the past two days inside a breathtaking Venetian palazzo that’s been in the same family since the 1500s workshopping better language for the website of an uber-cool glassware company—and because I am tired of looking for gimmicks to make myself feel better about my shortcomings—today you will be fed the original draft of a piece I wrote for Season Zine. Enjoy!
The Football Of The Future: A Close Look to Venezia FC’s Design Renaissance and What it Means for Football At Large.
Dislocated across a tiny archipelago in the middle of a lagoon in the North-East of Italy, Venice is a city known for its many wonders and rich cultural heritage.
Year-round, tourists from around the world flock to this sinking destination to admire a plethora of historical sights such as the opulent cathedral of Saint Mark with its gold mosaic façade, the various marble-clad churches and to visit the few remaining glass-blowing workshops on the islands of Murano and Burano. To complete the cliché, some of the more romantic visitors partake in a dreamy cruise through the peculiar slim waterways on a sleek black gondola while savoring a glass of delicious Prosecco. Other urban dwellers – like myself – choose more conventional means of transportation like the waterbus. Football is never a priority.
But it is exactly on the aforementioned ubiquitous boat–the vaporetto–that, on July 10th, 2022, I disembarked on the island of Saint Elena and made my way to the Stadio Pier Luigi Penzo, home of Venezia FC, weeks after the championship ended, to attend a fashion show.
It was quite dystopian to arrive at a football stadium and, instead of having to make my way through buzzed ultras dressed head to toe in their team’s colors, it was glamorous fashion students draped in flamboyant outfits and Euphoria-inspired makeup I had to dodge.
As the sun set behind the stands and painted the sky in a purplish shade of pink, the stadium filled up with excited friends and family – some of which clearly had never been there before – ticket in hand, ready to witness IUAV's (Venezia’s Design University) yearly graduation show. I found myself taking a seat amongst press and VIP guests on the padded arancio-nero-verde chairs that normally host the home team on game day.
Similar to a much-anticipated championship final, the atmosphere was buzzing. The hot, humid air reeked of cheerfulness and stage fright.
At the sound of a loud techno beat drop, just like a starting whistle, models began flooding the fresh grass and assumed a spread-out formation, eventually covering the whole pitch. With a little (maybe a lot) imagination, these performers recalled still-standing footballers waiting to hear the verdict of a foul play during a VAR moment.
This unorthodox partnership with the local design university (a sort of Italian Central Saint Martins) is only one of the many tassels in Venezia FC’s ascent to the top of fashion ranks and the subsequent cultural shift and impact the club has had on the industry.
Not for nothing, GQ awarded it the title of “most fashionable club” in an article surveying its surprising design renaissance– and a short-lived period in Serie A–after a decade of bankruptcy and unfortunate results.
But how has Venezia FC actually become this powerful brand transcending the beautiful game and caught the attention of an international audience who eagerly waits for the next (constantly sold out) kit drop season after season the same way hypebeasts camp for Supreme’s new collection?
The answer is Ted Philipakos, the defiant Greek-American club’s Chief Brand Officer steering the direction of the team’s communication strategy and visual identity; and consequently the reason behind its commercial success. A longtime friend since his first arrival in Italy to work in calcio a few years back, I met Ted to chat about his vision for the club the day after the aforementioned pompous experience.
Ted arrived at Caffé Rosso–a cute, historical café in the middle of Campo Santa Margherita–sporting a white polo shirt and a green Aimé Leon Dore hat in true New Yorker style. Nose dived into his iPhone, he was busy finalizing the reveal of the club’s latest rebrand, “Trying to get as much done before we announce the new visual identity and seasonal kits next week”, he said as he laid his phone on the metal table. Sonya Kondrienko, the club’s media director and pivotal figure, was also there.
Originally thought by Diego Moscoso of Nowhere FC and led by Bureau Borsche–the renowned German art direction studio behind FC Inter’s I AM Inter campaign and Balenciaga’s facelift–Venezia FC’s stylistic redirection features a minimalistic, contemporary take on Saint Mark Lion enmeshed into a V, with a visual mention to the “Fero de Prora” (the metal tail on the front of the gondola representing the seven islands on which the city sits on) on the right leg of the letter.
“We chose to work with Mirko Borsche because of his affinity with the city,” said Ted, “He had worked on the branding of the Venezia Pavilion at the Art Biennale in 2019 and therefore he was already familiar with the lion symbol. We felt confident he could deliver a beautiful logo without leaving out important elements,” he continued.
No stranger to the club as he had been curating its digital appearance for a few years, in addition to the logo, Mirko Borsche took care of designing the 22/23 home and third shirt with Kappa.
The result was a retro-looking, boxy jersey reminiscent of the hey-days of Venezia when players like Recoba and Vieri were gracing the Penzo with successful results. Both kits sold out within minutes of their release.
But while this cutting-edge identity was a turning point in cementing the club’s position as a global trailblazer, the journey to becoming a world-renowned team and taste-maker started in 2016, when Ted and Sonya first landed in Venezia.
“When we first arrived, the club was in a derelict state. It had been subjected to multiple bankruptcies in the span of a decade. Locals barely even knew the city still had a football team. Its social media presence and rating was at a minimum and there were no young fans at games”, Ted recalled in a stern tone as he sipped a decaf espresso.
Essentially inheriting a blank sheet, they were given the chance to start with a clean slate. They were granted the opportunity to rebuild the establishment from the ground up with no expectations as the team was basically in shambles; nobody recognized Venezia as a football town.
Over the course of seven years – and a stint at FC Reggiana under legendary baseball player turned president Mike Piazza – Ted and his team developed the club’s digital presence, reinstated faith and hope in the fans and slowly, good performance followed too. With the Serie A promotion at the end of the 2020/2021 season, Venezia FC went from being a destitute sporting association to a success story comparable to Leicester City’s unbelievable comeback.
In the industry at large, it was the right time too. Social media was starting to become a focal point; foreign eyes who had never been able to get in touch with remote realities finally had access backstage, allowing for small clubs to accrue a following based on their storytelling rather than their score at the 90th minute. Football started catering to Gen-Z’s low attention span by providing short highlights and clubs acknowledged their brand power. A new wave of clubs was born.
Ted–who before taking on the reins of Venezia was a Sports Marketing professor at NYU and thus acquainted with a strategic mindset–seized the opportunity and operated with one clear goal in mind: to build a global brand that authentically represented one of the most prominent cities in the world.
Starting at home by creating an ongoing dialogue with local entities and triggering interaction with the new generations, the club got to work to establish itself as a pioneer in the overlap between sport and culture.
“We wanted to represent all Venetians”, said Ted and Sonya in unison. “We wanted to include women and people who are traditionally not interested in the sport itself by making it more approachable and inclusive” they continued.
Despite being one of the most enchanting architectures to exist, the Penzo had for long been sitting silently on the Saint Elena island, almost always empty, forgotten by locals and tourists alike. Turning it into a destination was one of Ted’s many goals; his reference points being the Opera and monuments.
To achieve this, the club instituted a series of cultural projects spanning from an artist residency to an editorial format called Venezia by Venice. Periodically published on Venezia’s website, the latter features essays by international writers who have a connection to the city as well as interviews with personalities like Cecilia Alemani, the curator of the latest edition of the Biennale.
On the other hand, the residency’s main goal is to show football in an unprecedented way by inviting artists – currently only photographers – to spend a season following the team to interpret the sport through their lens, wherever their main focus may be.
Following ex-MLS player-turned-photographer Ethan White’s debut edition and a subsequent printed volume straightforwardly named “Venezia”, visual artist Eric Scaggiante was engaged in the project. His residency concentrated on a series of bold images depicting the curva, pushing the boundaries between football and culture forward.
“Eric had never been to the stadium before we asked him to partake in this activity,” said Ted, still incredulous. “So it was great to bring a fresh perspective to the table and capture the raw emotion of fans after forced Covid-19 closure”.
All in all, it is hard to find flaws in Venezia’s brand strategy. It’s contemporary and it sees football for what it is: an impactful tool for social engagement and cultural advancement. However, as a consequence of the club’s disastrous season and questionable athletic decisions, some of these creative endeavors have raised multiple eyebrows amongst local fans who took it to social media with snarky comments and satirical memes. As a result, the club decided to heavily restrict who was able to interact with it on Facebook and Instagram.
Even when it comes to sponsorship, Venezia does not miss. For the past season, the club partnered with The Green Project Agency, a company working to develop renewable resources with the goal to create environmental and social value and decrease the use of oil, coal, natural gas, and electricity. Curation is a keyword in Venezia’s vernacular. Nothing is left to the case, even when it comes to commercial partnerships. “We didn’t seek them out, they reached out to us and it turned out well organically”, said Philipakos about their technical sponsor, reiterating that nothing gets validated and approved unless the respective values align.
Matter of fact, sustainability isn’t simply a buzzword for the club. Giving back is a fundamental pillar in their range of priorities as the management is very adamant about leaving the city better than they found it. For this reason, in 2021, the club pledged to support the restoration of their home base by donating a percentage of the profits gained from the sale of the third and fourth kits to two important institutes: Save Venice–the leading American non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the artistic heritage of Venice–and We Are Venice–an independent NGO dedicated to the conservation of Venice as a living city.
Every project is intentional and designed to fit into the wider narration of the team; keeping long-term results at the forefront of mind. Venezia is rewriting what it means to be a football club and there is nothing that can stop them from being talked about; whether it’s good or bad, it doesn’t really matter. Their trajectory is clear.
But as this trend spreads further and other smaller clubs draw inspiration from Venezia, I can’t help but wonder: is this tendency going to shift our perception of sport and how are teams going to bridge the gap between more traditional, conservative fans – such as the Curva Nord and Sud – and new generations of followers without losing the spirit of the sport?
If these marketing tactics are proving to be a successful tool to broaden a club’s audience internationally, it seems like the core fan base is increasingly feeling alienated as proven by the low number of spectators present at games in the second leg of the 2021/2022 championship. No amount of fashionable photoshoots and cultural gimmicks could help Venezia FC’s disastrous athletic results which ultimately led to the team’s relegation.
As celebrated as the club has been in English-speaking countries or South Korea – places where the sport is perceived as an entertainment tool rather than visceral religion – it is clear that people are ready for a more inclusive, light-hearted way of experiencing football. Though, is this foreign lens on a hyper-local reality the way forward? Or is the hype around artsy clubs simply smoke and mirrors?
The dilemma gives way to an even more layered reflection: are we experiencing the climax of football as a business rather than a game?
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