step back and ask: who are we?
An interview with Ted Philipakos, ex-brand director of Venezia FC and current president and creative director of Athens Kallithea FC.
Thanks to everyone who’s supported the newsletter so far, and to those who signed up just to read this next edition of No Gatekeeping, an interview with Ted Philipakos, the creative mind behind two of the coolest football clubs in recent memory.
Just a quick note before we get into the interview proper:
The first outing of my Essay Club kicked off on Tuesday and it couldn’t be simpler to take part in. Free to join and open to everyone, all you need to do is read the email linked above, devour the chosen feature (this one is a personal favourite of mine from Wright Thompson), and wait for the March 19th newsletter to chat about it in the comments. Easy.
Okay, enough house-keeping. Let’s get into it.
No Gatekeeping 002: Ted Philipakos (part one)
The first thing you might notice is the kits. That’s to be expected. Even in an era when shirt aesthetics mean as much to some fans as what happens on the pitch, the jerseys of Italian club Venezia FC and Greek club Athens Kallithea FC have stood out.
Timeless and minimal yet eye-catching, scroll-stopping, and eminently checkout-visiting. Their beautifully-composed launches have set the standard all others follow.
But for Ted Philipakos, the ex-brand director of Venezia and current president and creative director of AKFC, it goes far deeper than aesthetics. Anyone can design ‘a fire kit’—especially if, as some other clubs do, your strategy appears to rely on copying already-successful templates and hoping nobody notices. But what really makes your efforts resound beyond vanity metrics and fleeting Instagram moments is context.
The story being told, and the reason why the brand is telling it, is all important.
I sat down with Ted to discuss branding, storytelling, and the importance of that context, as well as the reason why some clubs get it and others do not. This one’s a two-parter because, basically, there were too many interesting things covered in the interview. The first part is on brand-building, and the second gets into the weeds with a lot of practical advice.
As always with the No Gatekeeping series, I want these interviews to be filled with important takeaways, tips, and actionable directions to follow. You might not be starting a football club any time soon, but I believe there are insights every creative can take from this chat.
This interview has been edited for clarity. Part two will be published next week.
SD: What’s a common misconception about the work you do?
TP: I think it’s that what we do is about football kits. Or about “fashion”. When I took on the project at Venezia FC, the universe was pretty small. The club was coming out of its third bankruptcy in 10 years and the local audience had really shrunk over the years, let alone an audience beyond Venice. But there was a kind of freedom in that, with limited expectation. It was an opportunity to just make what felt right, something that was beautiful and represented the club and the city well, and there was no commercial activity attached to that — in the early years, the club didn’t even have a web shop. I think it was actually the ideal way to do it. What we were able to do was redefine the club’s DNA and mission in a holistic way, and everything else flows from that as a byproduct. But I think some people only see the end product. They think ‘Oh, they made a fire football kit and it sold out.’
It was never meant to be ‘fashion’ per se. One day I woke up and GQ had called us ‘the most fashionable club in the world’. That nickname stuck for a while but that wasn’t what we set out to do. If we had set out to be ‘fashion’, it wouldn’t have become what it was. It worked because we did not go into it with that specific intention. We just wanted to create an identity, a culture, and a point of view for the club that felt original and authentic, and just stay true to our taste and what we like. It’s hard to explain but when you’re doing something truly authentic, there’s some kind of magic in that, where it resonates with the audience—or at least some portion of the audience—in a special way. As opposed to doing something inauthentic or superficial or purely for a business result.
We’ve seen lots of clubs try to ‘copy’ that model—the ‘fashionable photoshoot’—with wildly different degrees of success. What do you think they’re missing?
I think they’re missing the other work we’re doing. You'll never be able to replicate that if you're looking at just one piece of what we have done; that's a byproduct of a lot of higher-level thinking. You’re just trying to replicate it in a vacuum. And now you’re designing [a kit] with the specific intention of selling shirts. Now you’re presenting your work as pure marketing, whereas we never really did that. And so I think a lot of people who replicate fall short because they're trying to replicate a success without stepping back and thinking about their own brand.
What does stepping back to assess look like?
You have to take a step back and think, ‘Okay, who are we? What's our story? What's our taste? What's going to come across to people as a truly authentic message from us?’. And it was the same with Athens Kallithea FC. I mean, a superficial take on that might be that ‘Oh, he's running the same Venezia play in Athens’. Just because you see a high aesthetic standard and kits that people have enjoyed—the actual DNA of the brand is different. Athens is a totally different place to Venice: this club has a different mission, tells a different story, with a different mood, aesthetic, everything. And once again, I had a very small inherited audience. There was not much of a fanbase, or customer base. There was none of that. Again, it was about, ‘What's the story here? Who are we? Let's make something that feels good to us’. And, from there, you hope people like it. But if you make something specifically because it’s what you think other people are gonna like, that's just not gonna work. I don't know. It’s that magic again. When you make something truly authentic to who you are and to your tastes, people somehow understand. Whereas if you're making something for a marketplace, they know that too. It’s not going to resonate in quite the same way. It needs context.
How important is first building that context to a project like this?
I would love to believe that the way we present things doesn’t come across as, like, marketing or sales. Whether it's the shirt launch, or the club itself, we’re always trying to create a context for the environment. Not to call anyone out, but, just last week, I was looking at LinkedIn, and one club was talking about how they were particularly proud of this graphic they made. It was, like, a Casa de Papel [Netflix’s Money Heist] reference. And they were talking about the engagement metrics and the impressions and all this stuff, and I'm just kind of like: ‘First of all, I don't get why this is supposed to be cool. The show’s from I don't know how many years ago now [it finished in 2021] and the club certainly had no connection to it. Why are you so proud of this? I don't understand.’
Clubs are using words like ‘content’. And, admittedly if you’re on LinkedIn you’re maybe not speaking directly to fans, but there’s definitely some proportion of fans on there. But you’re reducing your audience to one that consumes content rather than real culture and community. Now you really are treating fans as customers. And it’s inevitable what comes next: I don't care how cool your jersey is, when it comes out of an environment like that, it feels like sales and marketing. I’d say our environment is entirely the opposite thing. We probably also benefit from the fact that we're like, essentially, a small startup, but I think what we do comes across as a pretty pure form of fan culture, which I think people appreciate. So there's a big difference between if I put myself in the shoes of a fan. If I feel like I'm being sold something versus discovering something that truly feels like part of the culture of the game that I'm about… It’s a very different result.
I think what I’ve seen is a lot of brands—not just in football, but generally—seeing a format that works and thinking that’s a template to copy. They don’t take the time to work backwards from the end product. They don’t ask, ‘Okay, how did they come to this result that feels so organic to them?’
Yeah. I’ve fielded countless calls from Premier League clubs, Serie A clubs, Bundesliga clubs, an F1 team… And they want insight into how we’ve developed and positioned our brands. But they’re always asking more tactically: They want to know more about the design and final presentation than how we got to that point. They don’t point their attention further back. And I’m just like, ‘Look, the starting point is not ‘How do we design a nice jersey?’ It’s about ‘Who are we?’ If you can give a very articulate answer to that question, in a way that is original and differentiating, you’re onto something.
When we started the projects with Venezia FC and Athens Kallithea FC, we didn’t make a fancy deck. I made a crude, two-page Word document that outlined the DNA of each club: Values, ideas, moods—stuff like that. When you’re very clear on that stuff at the outset, it answers every other question for you. It will take care of the more tactical stuff, like tone of voice, design aesthetics, and what photographers we should use. Without that, you get lost in the weeds. Once you’re clear on your identity as a starting point, and that identity feels like something original and authentic to you, it will make your life so much easier. It informs every other question you will ask or be asked in the process.
It feels like brands, when they’re talking to you, are trying to skip to the end.
[Laughs] Yes. Exactly.
They’re like, ‘Alright, enough of that, just tell us how we make our money at the end of it’. What do they say when you try to make them go all the way back to the beginning again?
Some people get it, some don’t. But even those who get it… I think the tough, practical reality is that, in our industry, there will often be [stakeholders] at big clubs who want to maximise their return on investment and minimise the time it takes to get there. There is a hierarchy of power and people will meddle in the process; people who really shouldn’t be. I have to give credit to some brand directors and creative directors at clubs: their hearts are in the right place but, even if your ideas are clear, you’ve always got someone to answer to. It might be an owner or a club president or some executive who wants to be involved. And creative direction needs to be from a unique point of view; it can’t be catering to power like that. It just won’t work. You’re dead on arrival if that happens. When I came to Athens Kallithea, I very consciously consolidated those roles. It’s one of the reasons I left Venezia FC: It felt like the bigger and more successful the club got, the more my vision would be constrained by commercial and corporate influence, and I just wasn’t willing to compromise. So I followed that experience with a situation in Athens where I won’t have to compromise ever.
Do you think that this sort of project would be impossible to do at a larger scale, then?
I think you’ll get the rare owner who understands and has a genuine interest in contributing to a culture and an identity over maximising profit. To be honest, a lot of the moves I’ve made would have been vetoed at other clubs. What we’ve done in Athens is certainly not about maximising profit. But I actually think, in the long run, this approach will allow us to be more sustainable, more profitable and successful, but at a slower rate, certainly. Anywhere else I’d be pressured into taking a different avenue.
Does the switch to working with Kappa play into that?
Well, early in my run at Venezia FC, I had the freedom to leave Nike and go to Kappa [as the club’s kit manufacturer]. The only reason I did that was because I wanted 100% creative freedom to express my vision. But by the end of my tenure there, I felt like I was being pushed towards making a different kind of commercial calculation. They wanted short term results… And that’s not to suggest that we’re careless with money in Athens. We’re a very small club. We have a lot of good things going for us—on and off the pitch—but we’re small. We need to do what we can to survive. We’re going to be in that mode for a long time. But I have the freedom to express my vision and the process in Athens. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.
What’s an example of a choice you’ve made at Athens Kallithea that supports that longer-term thinking?
Well, this year our shirt sponsor is the National Museum of Contemporary Art [also known as ΕΜΣΤ]. They paid nothing for that space, but it meant something to me. It was valuable to me. And it was valuable to the club to make that partnership because it contributed something to culture and community here. I had the freedom to make that choice rather than sell the space to some commercial brand.
Why was football the medium you chose to tell these stories in?
I grew up in New York, but my family roots are in Greece and Italy. I was about 12 when I was properly introduced to football, which came from my father and family trips to Greece. It was unlike the American sports I had encountered. And, bear in mind, this is pre-internet—I’ve just turned 43 years old. But I became a Panathinaikos supporter, and football was this thing that magically connected me to my heritage. It connected me to a community of people and made me feel pride in where I came from. It opened up a world beyond New York, a whole new world. And from there I really began to understand football as this socio-cultural phenomenon. I also started to feel the beauty in the game, there was this overpowering visual stimulation for me. The kits, the scarves, the flags, the colours. It was really impactful. The combination of those two—the socio-cultural force and the beauty—has really been my relationship to football all the way through. It’s still my frame of reference when I’m trying to tell a story at a new club. I come in and I’m asking: ‘What’s the socio-cultural story here? What’s the history of this place? What are the things that are meaningful we can carry forward? What are the things that are lacking but have the potential to be improved?’ Above all, I ask: ‘How can we expand our community here without selling out who we are?’
It’s a very delicate balance to strike but, as you know, football is the world’s biggest sport but it’s exclusive in many different ways. It mostly speaks to a very specific, traditional audience, and that audience hasn’t changed much in a very long time. When you look at the demographics, the psychographics… I’m speaking in general terms here, but most of the time football still speaks to more men than women. And even with men, it’s a very certain type of man. From Venice to Athens, my goal was to break some of those barriers to entry that have caused people to think that the sport isn’t for them. Or that, growing up, they were socialised away from the sport. While remaining true to what my clubs represent, I’ve tried to open things up and give more people the kind of gift that I had. Football gave me something really inspiring. Ultimately that’s what I want to share with the most people possible. It goes back to your first question, about misconceptions: The shallow view is ‘He makes fire kits’. But that’s just a byproduct of every other thing we do.
Great interview! This is the perfect analysis of the modern football world versus the ones that want to do it different! As a marketeer in football, I can not have anything less than respect for Ted and his way of working!
I'm 24 years old and have been following you from Italy since Mundial Mag days. It's great to see what you achieved. Brilliant, rigorous and inspiring: great work.