Wannabe Magazine: From Community Project To Publishing Phenomenon
An online fashion and lifestyle magazine in Serbia is turning the publishing world on its head and picking up readers and awards in doing so. Fuelled by a focussed use of social media and sheer creative spark, Wannabe Magazine has become a publishing phenomenon that is shaking up a storm, less than a year into its existence.
Wannabe Magazine is an innovative community publishing project based in Belgrade. Set up in September 2010, the online magazine has a team of more than 100 young writers, designers and photographers, fronted by the charismatic media mastermind Lazar Stojkovic and his co-founders Nina Fićović (fashion editor) and Nađa Jokanović (editor-in-chief). The three of them bootstrapped the project and they are yet to see any money in return.
Explaining the birth of the project, Lazar said: “Nina wanted to start a blog or small e-commerce site to show off her creations. We started talking and came up with the idea of creating a whole new medium dedicated to fashion and lifestyle. She was from that world, I was a techie and so, using the synergy of our different talents and networks, we felt we could successfully collaborate on a bigger project.
“We brainstormed and she came up with the name. She said that everybody in Serbia is a wannabe a wannabe businessman, a wannabe sportsman, a wannabe criminal, a wannabe model, a wannabe politician… There are a lot of dreamers in Serbia.
“Fashion is a wannabe world, too, so it clicked with us. We were a bit concerned because people in Serbia are not very good with exotic English words like ‘wannabe’, but we went with it anyway. It felt right: Wannabe was the perfect name for our brand.”
The fashion-conscious Balkans has been kind to Wannabe, providing a ready appetite to sate. “Here in Serbia, women spend enormous amount of money on their clothing and time on their hair,’ said Lazar, when we met in Belgrade. “I often say, a lot of people here have empty fridges at home but their wardrobes are in full force and they follow all the latest fashion trends. The cafes on Monday morning are full of well-dressed people in spite of the official 20% rate of unemployment and quite a few unofficial figures which go even to 40% unemployment.
Tapping into that market has been key to the success of Wannabe but without investors’ cash to hand, they needed to be more creative in their marketing.
“In ten months, we have gathered together more than 100 members in our team who volunteer to create original quality daily content in a curated crowdsourcing environment,’ explained Lazar. “Wannabe has rapidly grown into a free and wildly popular online alternative to the commercial glossy magazines.”
“We do our best to cover interesting topics from the creative industries, primarily fashion, championing upcoming artists and giving them space they simply couldn’t get in mainstream media,’ Lazar was proud to say. “We are a bloggers’ magazine. We let young people have their voice. We even allow them to attack things that are bad in society, which is a rare thing in Serbian media.
“For example, we have a lot of gold-digger chicks in Serbia who dream of becoming a fashion designer and they just pay loads of money to media to represent them as high fashion designers, while the things they do are really crap. On the other hand we have extremely talented young people who are leaving Serbia because they cannot get their work into media here, even though they are really fascinating designers. We decided to turn the whole thing upside down and to give exposure to people who deserve it and completely ignore the others.”
Lazar is not just blowing his own trumpet. Wannabe’s is already ranked among the top 215 websites in Serbia – more popular than Cosmopolitan or Elle among online users in Serbia. That popularity was further confirmed when Wannabe walked away with the Fashion Web Project: People’s Voice gong at April’s recent Web Fest Awards, organised in association with Belgrade Fashion Week.
“This was really great,’ said Lazar. “We literally came out of nowhere, because nobody knew us there. They are a tight clique. All of a sudden you have a team of wannabes who appear out of nowhere, grab one of the precious awards and just go away with it again.”
“Serbia is very old fashioned. If you have TV ads and billboards and stuff, you are legitimate. If you are just online, they’re unsure. That’s why we created the media first so we can do what we want. Serbia is still in the digital dark ages in many ways. It has been an uphill battle, especially as a lot of people still consider the internet very unfamiliar to them, so we try to make it easy for them. But the situation is rapidly changing and Wannabe is at the forefront of those changes. We are proud of that.”
No wonder, then, that Wannabe is ruffling the feathers of major media houses in Belgrade, including the biggest daily newspapers, with attempts being made to plunder Wannabe’s team members almost every week. “I think they are scared of the internet because the fashion world hasn’t learned how to use it properly yet, not even globally,’ said Lazar. “Fashion is controlled by clans of people and those clans are so offline-minded, that even when they award the whole thing to some marketing agency they such strict requirements and guidelines that these guys can’t really do much.
“We are very irreverent but combining that whole rebel attitude with fashion is part of our success. We always keep one leg on other side of the red line and I guess that’s why the traditional media is literally scared shitless of us. They are trying to poach our writers all the time. They call them on their cell phones, even though they didn’t give out those numbers. But we are a community, a family, and we are fortunate that our people do not want to leave to work for a traditional company. Let the message go out: we’re here to stay.”
This incredible success in such a short time is even more astonishing as it has come about via word of mouth, without advertising or marketing support. In a business largely driven by advertising (and in debt to advertisers), this model deserves greater attention.
“We advertise only through word of mouth,’ said Lazar. “Without even a cent spent on either online or offline advertising, we have succeeded at growing to more than 150,000 monthly visits and half a million page views just by letting people recommend Wannabe to each other. We post ten-15 pieces of original content each day and, by the end of this year we should be at somewhere between 300-400,000 visits, which is really great.
“Our Facebook community is very interesting. We have 12,000 people who are almost fanatical about Wannabe. In Serbia, 38% of people are on Facebook, which is a huge penetration for any country. In Belgrade, it’s even higher – 56% of people have Facebook accounts. I always say that if anyone builds the first really profitable local online consumer business here in Serbia – and hopefully it will be us – we should raise a monument to Mark Zuckerberg for getting all those people online.
The typical Wannabe reader is a well-educated Belgrade female in her twenties, without children, who accesses the magazine’s website from home. About 95% come from Serbia and around 50% from Belgrade, but their footprint of awareness is very broad, as Lazar explained. “Everybody knows about Wannabe. I am always surprised when people tell me: ‘Ah, you are part of my morning ritual. When I come to work, I brew my first cup of coffee and I save Wannabe for the last 15 minutes, like a treat, and then I start working’. It’s great because brand recommendation is already opening so many doors and giving us a leg up.
“I still recall when I first hear two girls talking about reading something on Wannabe. I was stopped in my steps. They were talking about an article that came out that day. I realised that we were really growing. Sure, I could see it in numbers but it is very different when you see it for yourself.
“Some members of our team printed their own Wannabe t.shirts just for the kicks. They went for a walk through their neighbourhoods and they were approached by people asking where they could get the shirts. We have clearly hooked into something special here and the Wannabe brand has a lot of potential besides the magazine and the next step we plan – a private sales website. That is why we are doing the parties and so on.
Indeed, Wannabe’s parties have become well known in Belgrade and they serve a major business function. “These parties finance the production of our private sales store,’ said Lazar. “They are fun and everyone enjoys them. Each time we create a “task” for those who come – dress in black & white, colour block your outfit, or whatever – and fashionistas answer that call gladly, but the parties still have a serious purpose in that we use that money to finance building our first commercial web service. We don’t have any investors, so we figured out this in order to both provide a lot of fun for our fans and get the seed capital we need to grow.
With its one-year anniversary a few months away, Wannabe Magazine and its young team of entrepreneurs plans some exciting next steps, including roll-out of the first private sales website in Serbia. “It’s going to be an awesome service, with some great well known brands on board already,’ said Lazar. “Our initial idea was to get people online via the magazine and then start building additional commercial services they’ll love until we built the whole company.
“Already Wannabe Magazine has grown into a very successful community project. Now we’re going to put everything we’ve got behind the private sales websites to make it successful. If it goes well it has the potential to be the biggest and most profitable internet venture in Serbia.
Wannabe is pleased to be encouraging greater co-operation in the region, evidenced by a media partnership with Europe Future Fashion in Croatia. “At the time, they contacted us as the only foreign media that is not an international glossy magazine to be their media partner, which is great,’ said Lazar. “I think it builds bridges of friendship, especially here in the region where those bridges are not very wide. We’ve also got several people from Croatia on our team. Can you imagine it? Serbia and Croatia: two arch nemeses cooperating via Wannabe. It’s great. Fashion brings people together.
“Our goal is to become a regional lifestyle company. We will have a successful online magazine, a private sales site and we want to be in all countries of ex-Yugoslavia. My vision of further localisation is very region-specific with roll-out of services relevant to each country.”
Clearly, Lazar is a man on a mission. Listening to him talk about Wannabe, it is obvious that he will not accept anything less than total success. With a strong team, a clear business head and inexhaustible drive, anything should be possible for Lazar.
“We are not externally financed, we volunteer our time, and we give it our all,’ he said. “There is a whole lot of improvisation. But at the same time we know what we are aiming for. We know our goals and we are not straying from them.”
7 / 1 / 2011 1:17 pm
Wannabe Magazine is an amazing project and it feels great to be part of it.
As Lazar already said we are like one big family and with such a tremendous positive energy everything is possible.
Everyone should stay tuned with Wannabe, because the best is yet to come 😉
Best regards,
Jovana
7 / 1 / 2011 1:26 pm
I agree with Jovana!:)
Wannabe Magazine is an amazing project.
I’m so glad I’m a part of the Family!:)
7 / 1 / 2011 3:04 pm
Thanks for your comments. It is good to hear Lazar’s impression on me being reinforced by his team. Good luck with future issues and ventures.
7 / 1 / 2011 3:07 pm
I’m a fashion coperator foe Wannabe Magazine.
And I have only the best words for them!
Glad to be a part of this project!
http://www.amolusso.blogspot.com
7 / 1 / 2011 4:03 pm
I totally agree with my colleagues who have left their comments above. Being part of the Wannabe family it’s a real pleasure for me, for all of us. Great article. Best regards, Emina
7 / 1 / 2011 6:29 pm
I agree with Jovana,Lili,Emy I love Wannabe project with all my heart and I am glad to be part of their team 🙂
7 / 1 / 2011 10:05 pm
Great job! 😉