Introduction

Having decided that STIG required radical surgery to survive in the cut throat world of fanzine sales, we hired over the closed season a team of top management consultants to tell us just that. We needed someone who could provide the challenge,  focus, energy and new ideas to enable STIG to be bold in its aspirations, identify winning positions, break out of the inertia and build significantly improved corporate and individual performance. In short, we had a problem, no one else could help and, since we could find them, we hired ... Exodus Strategic Management Consultants.

Exodus Consultants

The good people from Exodus got to work straight away and held deep and meaningful meetings with our paper supplier. They compared the pages per unit population in STIG with several fanzines published in countries with a greater population than Ireland. They found, to our horror, that of all the fanzines considered, STIG had the most pages per unit population (see unhelpful graph). As STIG doesn’t have enough female members to increase the population of Ireland by any significant amount (indeed, STIG doesn’t have any female members), the consultants concluded that the number of pages in STIG should drop from 12 to 10. One of our readers sent in an e-mail to point out to Exodus that taking a conclusion, searching only for statistics which support that conclusion and then using those statistics to prove the original point is nothing more than a circular argument. Exodus countered by ignoring that reader.

The Exodus consultants also consulted the websites of fanzines in competing sports and read their blurb. So impressed were they that they downloaded some photos of competing fanzines to be compared with STIG. While, to the untrained eye, STIG might compare favourably with these images, we have been assured that that is not the case. There’s no point in arguing with us on this because we can back up our opinions with an expensive consultants’ report.

At one stage Exodus had the unfortunate experience of having to speak to one of our readers. Apparently this little upstart thought that his opinion might be of interest! Really, some people just don’t know their place. Luckily the Exodus consultants thought quickly and told him that they’d call to arrange a meeting. The poor fool is probably still waiting patiently beside his phone. Making the best of a bad situation, the consultants included this poor delusional fellow in their list of people consulted, just to give the report a touch of the common man.

Finally, when printing their report, Exodus Consultants increased the font size, used huge margins and added an appendix which contained no useful information but was bigger than the report itself. Common features of reports compiled on a pay-per-page basis.

The result of all this was the Exodus Report. The report made for damning reading. Here is a short excerpt:

"...when compared with other fanzines, STIG sales (under 400 in total last year) trail, by some distance, the sales of other fanzines - FourFiveOne (424,000), One F in Longford (815,000), Two Fs in Longford (2.2 million)"

Ignoring clear evidence to the contrary we have accepted these figures to be true, and we find them simply unacceptable. This circular argument has made it clear to us that STIG requires radical surgery to survive in the cut throat world of fanzine sales.

Fanzine Restructuring

Armed with this report, and safe in the knowledge that no one actually reads these things, STIG’s CEO went about implementing his own plan for world domination, doing what he likes and answering all criticism by referring the critic to the all powerful Exodus Report.

His first proposal was to increase the number of pages in STIG from 12 to 22. These 22 pages would be split into two separate 11 page sections, available at opposite ends of the ground. At half time, the four most popular articles in each section would merge into an 8 page fanzine called ’STIG Premier’ with the remaining 14 articles (all of them match reports on games less important that an early round of the League Cup) would then form a separate, less interesting, fanzine called ’STIG Championship’. Unfortunately for our CEO, but luckily for the rest of us, the STIG writers saw some sense and voted down these proposals. The STIG CEO to this day refuses to accept that his idea for a fanzine with an odd number of pages is simply impractical.

So angered was the CEO at this audacious display of democracy by the writers that he vowed to seize control of the entire fanzine for himself. In any case, he had always had his favourites. He felt that some of the writers, despite producing good articles, should be removed from the fanzine. He didn’t trust them. He banned them from writing articles critical of the CEO, any breach of the ban would result in a 5,000 euro fine. There remained whisperings that not everyone in the organisation supported his leadership. He needed more power to ensure that only writers loyal to him should remain.

In his first attempt at a coup, he promised to lead the writers to a land of milk and honey. A land where STIG would be marketed effectively, run on a professional basis and provided with much improved infrastructure. To reach this nirvana all the writers had to do was sign a simple contract. The writers were eager because they had received a wonderful statement of intent from the CEO. However, when it came time to sign the contract all that the writers were given was a bank sheet of paper. The writers were confused by this but the CEO explained that they should sign the bottom of the sheet and he would fill in the contract later. This was simply a minor technicality, a time saving measure because the first issue for the new season was due out soon. The writers asked why, since they had had plenty of free time over the closed season, was this change being rushed in at such short notice. The CEO explained that he had been busy with a lot of paperwork and hadn’t had the time to deal with this issue until now. The writers were unconvinced and decided to adjourn the meeting for a week. To garner public support for his cause, the CEO decided to leak a softened version of his plans to the national papers.

One of our readers read this leak and pointed out that the CEO’s proposals were, in fact, the exact opposite of what the Exodus Report recommended. To solve this problem the CEO threatened to withdraw that reader’s international tickets unless he retracted his statement, pretended to like STIG when posting on an internet message-board and said nice thing about UCD’s under 21’s manager.

Unfortunately the criticism didn’t stop there. Several more readers got the idea into their insignificant little heads that we care about their opinions any more than we care about Irish football. Plebeians are easily dealt with though. So far all we have had to do is ignore their e-mails, letters and other communications. The emperor in the fairy tale could still be wearing his expensive suit today if he had simply cut the tongues out of all the little boys in his kingdom.

The meeting was re-convened a week later when many of the writers had had a mysterious change of heart. 18 of them were now happy to sign the blank contract. The CEO had even found time to fill some of it in. It now read that the fanzine for 2006 would contain nothing but match reports from friendly games. The fanzine would be wound up at the end of 2006 and be replaced by a shiny new re-branded fanzine for 2007. Writers would be invited to join the new fanzine and their application would be judged on many criteria, the quality of articles being only a small part of the decision process. Writers might also be judged on where they’re from, how physically attractive they are, how big a house they live in and on their marketing potential. Writers also might not be judged on any of those criteria. The CEO did promise that he’d try to fill in that part of the contract by June.

Page Sharing

In parallel to all this, a separate plan was unfolding. Two of STIG’s oldest and most successful writers hold centre page articles. The CEO has seen the opportunity to make money from selling one of these prime locations to property developers to advertise high spec luxury shoebox apartments. Why could both writers not simply share the one remaining page? With all the money made from the property developers it should be possible to replace the A5 page with a modern high-tech A4 page (Yes, we know. It is no more physically possible to fit an A4 page onto an A5 one than it is to build a 20,000 seater stadium at the site of Dalymount but our CEO generally believes what can be voted on is more important that what can actually be achieved).

The writer who would move under the plan was a good friend of the CEO. He was comfortable with the move because as a younger man he had spent some time in a nearby page called the Joyful Mountain, having gained this promotion after an exciting article he wrote on the interaction between the cigarette and horse-box industries. He had been having financial difficulty of late, so much so that he was unable to pay the 24,000 euro transfer fee when a young apprentice moved to his page. On that occasion he had to be bailed out by the CEO. This was only the most recent example. He had received a major bail out two years previously when he had skimped on ensuring his ink was waterproof and his page was destroyed by flood damage.

This writer had been planning to sell the page to property developers himself and move to a cheaper page in a section of the fanzine which no readers ever go anywhere near. One of the organisations which represents his readers, Read Inc, was very vocal about the move. Some of them ventured as far as the proposed new page and did not like what they saw. It was nothing more than a gap in the fanzine between ads for farmers’ fields. After a secret meeting with the writer, these readers dropped all protests without any explanation.

The huge drop in readership wouldn’t have done him any damage in the medium term as he’d have been able to pay off any debts and live on the surplus cash for a few years to come. In the longer term he was telling himself that the Metro newspaper might bring readers to his out of the way page, but deep down he knew, like the rest of us, that this was just a pipe dream. This is why he found the opportunity to move into the page next door so appealing.

The other writer, originally from Central Europe, was democratically elected by his readers. He had also been having some financial difficulty of late, but not as serious as some people believe. He had borrowed heavily to update his page but most of the debt was now paid off, thanks largely to the controversial agreement he reached with the local shopping centre where he would shorten his articles to make space for more ads for shops and apartments. The constitution of his organisation required that any deal be voted on by his readers so it is considered unlikely that they will accept the proposal. Other STIG writers are starting to get worried. This deal could represent a precedent seeing many more pages sold off to property developers forcing page-sharing onto the readership.

Conclusion

Here at STIG we hope that this article has helped our readers understand the necessity for our bold and radical re-branding. If you have any further questions, please feel free to buy a copy of one of the national newspapers. Leaks detailing our further plans should be appearing in articles by Gerry McDermott and Emmet Malone on a regular basis

This article originally appeared in two parts in Volume 6, issues 1 and 2 of STIG.