Beautifully Designed Eight by Eight Engages a Global Audience

This interview is a part of a larger feature documenting some of the most exciting magazine launches and relaunches of the past two years. Click here to view more interviews with publishers of newly launched or relaunched titles. If you've cracked open a copy of Esquire, Forbes Life, or O, The Oprah Magazine at any point over the past few years, you're probably familiar with the work of Priest & Grace, a blue-chip Manhattan design firm. Indeed, for the past five years partners Robert Priest and Grace Lee have been responsible for overhauling the visual look of many of the publishing industry's most recognized print magazines. One mountain the design duo had always hoped to scale, however, involved creating a publication of their very own. That dream first came to light with the launch of Howler, a well-received soccer magazine that owes its visual concept to Priest and Lee's creative direction. But after collaborating on just two issues, a falling out with Howler's co-founders once again left Priest and Lee without a title to call their own. Soon after, the idea for Eight by Eight was born. Named after the dimensions of a regulation soccer goal, Eight by Eight is a lavishly produced magazine marked by its exceptionally well-executed design and illustrations. And although the growing popularity of soccer among U.S. audiences certainly hasn't hurt the book's slow-but-steady growth, Priest, Lee, and marketing director Cooper Lemon point out that because Eight by Eight is intended for a global audience, social media efforts and the creation of free online content have become crucial to its continued success. What inspired you to launch a soccer magazine? Robert Priest: We wanted to do something for ourselves -- something we could get behind with a sense of passion. And I happen to be somebody who's really passionate and crazy about football. So that was the basic thrust of it: the passion, and the understanding that it's an incredibly popular game that's underserved by magazines. The idea was to create a very, very visual magazine. But the surprise, essentially, would be the quality of the writing. Can you share some of the details of your business strategy? Cooper Lemon: I think the most important thing is for us to create a solid subscription base. We need that to grow on -- that's our backbone. At the same time I'm working on creating partnerships around content sharing, to get our name out there and get in touch with new readers. An example of that would be a partnership we just did with the newly-launched Vice Sports. We shared a lot of content with them during the World Cup. Forging those partnerships moving forward is how we're going to grow our audience. How do you plan to develop your online content strategy? Lemon: Well, from tracking through Google Analytics, we've really come to understand that [Eight by Eight] is a global product. To supplement that we've started creating content on our new blog, which is called The Pitch. And that's continuing to help drive traffic to our website, and in turn, to drive subscription sales and single-issue sales. We're going to continue to create more content that's free and that doesn't live in the magazine. That's definitely a big strategy of ours.We've also launched a digital edition, and we've just released our first podcast. Aside from that, we're reaching out to the bigger companies that are involved in soccer -- your Nikes, your Adidas, your Pumas -- and just seeing what kind of relationships can be forged there. Do you have plans to expand your international distribution? Grace Lee: Yes, we do. Right now, aside from our U.S. distribution we also have a U.K. distributor, and I think we have over 20 locations within Europe and Asia. And our print subscribers get the digital edition for free. We've had a lot of requests for wider international distribution because shipping is so expensive. So it was important for us to have the digital edition out there, so [international readers] can have access to it. What is it about the marketing that's so challenging? Cooper: Well, that's a big question. I come from a soccer marketing background, so I feel like I was coming into this with a pretty solid understanding of the soccer community here in the States. A lot of those people are on social media because the sport is not currently getting the attention it deserves on your mainstream media outlets. And you'll see a drastic drop-off of media outlets covering the sport [now that the World Cup is over.] So that's a challenge. Then again, we're here in New York City, and there's such a vibrant soccer community here. On Saturday and Sunday mornings you can see people running to bars and putting on their jerseys. And a lot of [what we do] is grassroots marketing -- just trying to take advantage of where we are geographically. And grassroots marketing is great -- it doesn't cost that much -- but it does take a lot of time and energy. What specifically do you mean by "grassroots marketing?" Cooper: A lot of it is about connecting with fan groups. Almost every Premiere League club and every other big European club -- even South American clubs -- all have followings here in the city, and they're all connected through supporter groups that seem to organize through social media. One example is that we've been in touch with the New York City Arsenal Supporters Club, and they're having a massive event coming up. We reached an agreement with the group to be a part of that event: We designed the poster for the event and we'll be donating magazines for the Arsenal supporters. Things like that have been really important for

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Beautifully Designed Eight by Eight Engages a Global Audience

Dan Eldridge

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