Brand Management. Playboy

1. THE HISTORY OF THE
PLAYBOY BRAND
“IT WAS THE MAGAZINE THAT CARRIED THE BRAND, NOW THE BRAND CARRIES
THE MAGAZINE.”
HUGH HEFNER, 2010
MADE BY ECATERINA BARBUS.

2. HOW HAS
EVERYTHING
BEEN STARTED
•The idea to use naked girls in
Playboy came from serving in the
war - that was the time when pin-
ups enjoyed major celebrity
because soldiers pinned up the
pictures on the barracks. The
concept behind the Playboy
playmate was the pin-up.
• To launch Playboy, Hefner
managed to gather $ 8,000 from
friends, relatives and bank loan.
• In December of 1953, the first
issue hit newsstands and it was
definitely more demure than its
modern incarnations.
• First Playboy magazine had a
pictures of Marilyn Monroe.
• Nationwide sales of the first issue
reached 50,000 copies.

3. THE CREATION OF THE PLAYBOY BUNNY LOGO
Designed by Art Paul, the magazine’s first art director,
the rabbit head has appeared on the cover of every
issue of a magazine since the second. The rabbit was
chosen to be the Playboy icon because Hefner believed
it represented a playfulness that suited the magazine.
An artist drew the iconic logo that is famous around
the globe. A bow-tie was added to the bunny image in
order to give the logo a classier feel.

4. PLAYBOY SUCCEEDED INITIALLY FOR THREE
PRIMARY REASONS:
• 1) Playboy fulfilled an existing need among consumers. The need of breaking the
rules and speak out against the political, religious and social norms.
• 2) Playboy was different from any other product on the market. What
differentiates Playboy from the other brands is that it represents good and enjoyable
life, while at the same time it contains sexy, glamorous and unique style.
• 3) Playboy targeted a specific niche audience. When Playboy launched it was
billed as a liberating, sophisticated and intellectual response to conservative sexual
norms. This was a magazine for young men that celebrated a sexually liberated
lifestyle focused on self-gratification.The main target were modern and classy man
from 18 to 49 years old. Sixty years later, the magazine’s advertisers are chasing a
readership of middle-aged man who are undereducated and underpaid.

5. PLAYBOY’S
GOLDEN AGE
DURING THE ‘60
• 1960 The first Playboy Club opens in Chicago. The
private Playboy would provide a new way for
consumers to experience the brand and live the
lifestyle the brand promised. In simplest terms, it
brought the Playboy brand to life.
• 1964 Playboy Theater opens in Chicago
• 1966 New Playboy headquarters opens in Chicago.
London Playboy Club and Casino opens.
• 1968 Playboy resort opens in Geneva and in
Wisconsin
• 1969 Hugh Hefner purchases the Playboy jet and
names it Big Bunny. The London Sunday Times
selects Hugh Hefner as one of the most influential
people of the century. Playboy company annual sales
reach $96 million.

6. A NOTABLE
CHANGES FROM
60’S TO 70’S
• Cold War
• Inflation
• Throughout the turmoil of 70s, people searched for
ways to escape the problems of the day. Alcohol,
drugs and sex were the prevailing forms of
escapism.
• The biggest obstacle facing Playboy in the 1970s
was the growing Femminist Movement that
directly targeted Playboy and Hugh Hefner as
symbols of everything that was keeping women
from attaining equality.
• In mid 70s Palyboy Chicago employee were arrested
on drug charges, hence Playboy brand was tarnished
more.
• Competition with a Penthouse and Hustler
magazines

7. THE MAIN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PLAYBOY AND
PENTHOUSE
• Playboy is more sophisticated, soft
core
• Playboy’s target is classy type of men
or even women
• Playboy is more of a nude model
magazine.
• Playboy has more articles
• The magazine's pictorials offered more
sexually explicit content than was
commonly seen in most openly sold
man’s maganizes of the era.
• A mix of “sex, politics and protest”.
• Images of women, left little to the
imagination.
• Models engaged in sexual activity.
• Hard core and aggressive

8. COMPETITION WITH HUSTLER
• It was first published in 1974. Hustler
is a porno magazine which contains
fun articles, parodies.
• It showed explicit views of female
genitalia, becoming one of the first
major US-based magazines to do so, in
contrast with relatively modest
publications like Playboy.
• Considered more explicit and more
self-consciously lowbrow than Playboy
and Penthouse.
• It depicts hardcore themes

9. ‘80S THE PLAYBOY DECLINE
• In the 1980, the Playboy brand was already past maturity and in decline
• Rapid overexpansion of the brand in the three prior decades left the brand without
the resources
• Growing competition from other magazines and television left Playboy without a
strong message of differentiation.
• Instead a series of conflicting positions, brand messages, and disjoined brand
extensions futher confused consumers . The balance would be nearly impossible to
find, and throughout the 1990s, consumers would wonder what exactly the Playboy
brand message actually was.
• Macro environment dominated much of the Playboy brand decline as well

10. 80-90’S CHRISTIE HEFNER TRYING TO
REPOSITION THE BRAND IN DECLINE
• As Hefner’s daughter started to run the company, she tryed to repositon the Playboy
brand to appeal to the broader, mainsteam audience with a new brand message of
“Quality fun for grown-ups”, thus the brand that could have disappeared in the 80’s
emerged at the end of the decade with a good chance for a survival. The next decade
would find the brand and the Playboy Enterprises’ stock price on a relatively stable
growth attack. She made a major commitment to refocus the brand and contract it
back down to its core competencies.
• In the 80’s Playboy launched a lot of commercials in order to stand out from the
competition growth, also reducing the magazine’s price.
• The brand survived in ‘80 also because it was the pioneer brand with extraordinary
value.

11. PLAYBOY CONNECTIONS WITH PAMELA ANDERSON AND ANNA NICOLE SMITH
BREATHED NEW LIFE INTO PLAYBOY IN THE 1990S AND GAVE IT ENOUGH
MOMENTUM TO KEEP GOING AT A TIME WHEN A BRAND WAS STRUGGLING TO
FIND ITS MESSAGE, POSITION AND PROMISE.

12. COMPETITION
OF THE 90’S• New competition emerged in the 90’s from the
magazines such as FHM and Maxim.
• These magazines are erotic, timely content appeled
directly to the younger male audience.
• Hugh Hefner responded to falling citculation
numbers in the 90’s by revamping Playboy magazine
again. He hired new editor away from Maxim and
tried to create a new version of Playboy that stood
for a specific type of lifestyle as it had in earlier
decades before the conservative 1980s.
• The goal was to create the next level of men’s
magazine for younger adult readers who were ready
to trade up from Maxim. At the end of the decade,
3.2 million copies of Playboy magazine were sold
each month in the United States.

13. PLAYBOY MARKETING
DIRECT MARKETING TACTICS
• Traditional tactic- direct mail. Utilize
Playboy’s verified subscriber database.
Playboy Enterprises, has strong
customer privacy policies governing its
direct marketing businesses that
incorporate safeguards and practices
used by the country's largest and best-
known catalogers and direct
marketers.
GUERRILLA MARKETING
• Stage character actors dressed as Hugh
Hefner and Playmates running down
the street being chased by Hugh
Hefner. Target same major
metropolitan areas as outdoor
advertising, interact with fotos and
establish a relationship with
audience/consumers.

14. LIFESTYLE MARKETING
• Playboy sponsorship and promotional
events at clubs and bars.
• Every club, hotel, resort, etc created by
Hefner is a touch point where
consumers could experience and
personalize the brand.
• Playboy’s TV show is another aspect of
the Playboy style for people who can
stay at home in front of tv and
experience the brand.

15. PLAYBOY UTILIZES MOBILE MARKETING
• PlayboyU.com, a social networking site owned and
operated by Playboy Enterprises, Inc., is using
mobile marketing to reach college students.
• The site, encourages students to generate their
own content, such as videos and bar reviews,
along with articles from professional writers.
• Playboy uses social networking and mobile
marketing to promote the site to its target
demographic. Some examples of this include a
“Miss Playboy Mobile” contest
• It has been explored how brands increasingly
utilize mobile to market to this 18-26
demographic, and Playboy seems to understand
the benefits of this.

16. SOCIAL MEDIA AND WORLD WIDE WEB-PLAYBOY
• As the competition was growing and the era of internet has begin, Playboy
increased their use of the social media and web without damaging its value
proposition. Throughout the 20th century, "Playboy" established the niche
magazine, one in which the focus is narrowed to a specific readership. In the 1990
new competition comes from the Internet. Ultimately, much of this competition are
available for free and offer a more interactive experience than the one dimensional
Playboy magazine provide. Now, as the Internet becomes the primary source of
information for upcoming generations, magazine is working well in order to
establish their online presence. Lets see what are the Playboy social media and web
tools:
• Use of celebrities for advertising
• Playboy provide at no charge a suite of merchandise to “popular” TV program
characters in order to obtain product placement advertising

17. SOCIAL MEDIA AND WORLD WIDE WEB-PLAYBOY
• Playboy today has 714 217 followers on Twitter .
• Playboy has a lot of applications for Iphone and Ipad
• Playboy managed to stand the social media competition
thank to Manwin(leading international provider of high-
quality adult entertainment). Manwin is a strong and
experienced partner, and it managed to maximize the
value of Playboy's TV and online businesses.

18. FACEBOOK MARKETING
This is how the situation of Playboy’s Facebook Marketing evolved in 5 years,
from 2008 till today.
• In 2008 when the social networks became more than important tool for advertising,
Playboy was missing a huge marketing opportunity on Facebook. Of course, Playboy
also has a page, and at that time they had over 1700 fans. Pretty cool. Except, there
is almost nothing on the page. Playboy is a huge media company - meaning that their
job is to publish content - has almost no content on Facebook. They are very rapidly
letting down their 1700 fans.
• These are a bunch of things that have been realized on Facebook from 2008 till
nowadays:
• All the Playboy Bunnies finaly have profiles. Playboy help its models maintain
Facebook profiles, and they should be fans of Playboy.

19. FACEBOOK MARKETING
• Add events. Playboy makes a lot of money allowing other brands to use the Playboy
brand (Dewar's Scotch has thrown "Playboy Parties" in a number of cities before).
They use Facebook to promote live events. This is a powerful way to quickly, cheaply
and easily promote events.
• More photos. I mean, what really is Playboy without photos? Of course they don't
want to give away stuff they charge for, but all they have posted in 2008 was one
album with 6 photos. This is like posting 6 words from an entire set of
encyclopedias. Nowadays, they post new photos every day.
• Develop a Facebook App. By developing an application, Playboy can further engage
the Facebook community. There are lots of Facebook App for Playboy.

20. BRAND
EXTENSION:
GALAXY MODEL
The Galaxy model is made up
of different universes the
coherence of which is ensured
by the creator himself.
Playboy brand extension is
represented by a so called
galaxy model, in fact Playboy
sells everything: clothes,
accessories, perfumes, not to
mention the resorts and
hotels under its name,
modeling agency, movie
production. Every Playboy
product is a legitimate entry
into the brand universe.

21. FROM IDENTITY
BRAND TO AN
ICONIC BRAND
• Playboy brand is representing something more than
a product or service.
• It is instantly recognazable (everyone knows
Bunny Logo); thus it has intrinsic advantage over
others
• Over time the brand came to embody the myth
• It has a strong association with a particular time or
country
• Iconic brand should be able to adapt to a the local
culture, for ex. Asian market where such brand as
Playboy are used to flaunt wealth and status
• In a complex world Iconic brand offer a shortcut to
decision making

22. BUNNY BUSINESS
SOLD OR NOT?
• The last news of the Playboy Enterprises selling
were found on September 13, 2009.
• A potential buyer is Richard Branson. According
to the Telegraph magazine, he is willing to pay for
the company Playboy Enterprises $ 317 million.
• Playboy experienced its heyday in the 60’s, when
the glossy magazine with the half-naked girls and
bunny logo on the cover read every fourth student
at the university.
• But the development of the internet and its free
access to the erotic have had an impact on the sales
of the magazine. The reason was a crisis as well.
• Hefner didn’t sold Bunny business and currently
he owns 70% of the Playboy group.

23. PLAYBOY BRAND
TODAY
• It’s easy to understand Hefner’s motivation to sell
his business. The internet had taken a wrecking
ball to his business model. Magazine and
newspaper sales are in terminal decline.
• Playboy is not as relevant as it was in the past
decades. Their major profits do not consist in
magazine’s publishing anymore. Television is
currently the company's biggest earner,
accounting for around 40% of revenues.
• The company opened a club in Macau, hoping to
take advantage of what it says is its “luxury brand”
status in Asia. In fact, Playboy is about to open the
new and very first club in India, in Goa.
• According to the Wall Street Journal, revenues are
down from $240 million in 2009 to just $135
million in 2012. But profits have nearly doubled,
from $19.3 million to $38.9 million.

24. NOW MORE THAN EVER, THE COMPANY IS
SELLING A FEELING RATHER THAN A PRODUCT
• The Playboy’s success is the result of
founder Hugh Hefner’s adherence to the
rules of Branding 101.
• The Playboy bunny is one of the most
recognizable brand logos in the world, and
the robe-wearing, pipe-smoking Hefner is
a strong brand himself.
• Mr Flanders(CEO) talked about his desire
to develop Playboy Enterprises as a “brand
management” company, licensing the
Playboy name as well as the use of its
legendary logo. There may still be money in
the bunny.

25. THANK U