Say it ain’t so Hef! Apparently, Playboy is having some trouble.
Tycoon Hugh Hefner has been advised to cut back on staff at his multi-million dollar glamour empire as it struggles to cope during the global economic turmoil.
The 83-year-old has been told to lay off some of his staff at his Los Angeles and New York offices as soon as this month or go bankrupt.
The company has recently seen shares fall from £6.20 to £1.55.
An insider at the company told the Daily Star that bosses had been aware of the worsening situation for “a while”.
“Only the top brass has known for a while how bad things have been for Hef recently.”
I am not sure what will happen to Playboy, clearly, it remains one of the strongest brands in all of business, let alone media. I don’t understand why Playboy does not open up its amazing content (not the pictures, I swear) to online audiences. Playboy has conducted and published some of the best interviews ever, they also have a lot of comic strips etc., why on earth hasn’t Playboy had a free, ad-supported “clean” site (no nudity, basically) with pictures of somewhat dressed attractive women to go along a paid racy site with nudity, I do not know?
As well, Playboy sure could have been more aggressive on the M&A front. For example, why Playboy never approached to buy my old company AskMen remains one of the better mysteries in the world. There remain other sites today that Playboy can buy…
This got me thinking to the broader question, do advertisers embrace or shun racy content?
There are two trends, one being a general one in society and one being related to advertising:
- things that were once taboo are less so.
- advertisers are continuously behind trends.
Examples:
When I was at AskMen running ad sales, we began to move away from poker clients, for example… then lo and behold, poker became a pop culture phenomenon… everywhere on mainstream media and even advertisers (Degree for example being just one, who seems to have) began to jump on the bandwagon.
Then, I realized porn was becoming more and more mainstream. For example, we always knew we did not want adult content on the site… we even struggled with the decision to simply interview Jenna Jameson (I did the interview) - but before we knew it, Jenna was all over the mainstream media… and you see that slipping into mainstream media today, what with Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan’s (and sadly, Chris Crocker’s, too) crotch popping up on cover pages of magazines.
I think the next, latest trend is extreme violence… look at mixed martial arts, the fastest growing sport in the US. Not to pass judgment (at all), but why is this becoming mainstream? Why? Because society is accepting this even though it’s simply shock value… which sells. Think Chris Crocker.
Connecting my two trends: advertisers are always behind the 8-ball. Another example?
Blogs blew up in 2003-2004. 2003 due to mainstream media not caring to cover the Iraq war and then 2004 because of the US presidential elections… yet the next year, a number of advertisers began to implement blogs in their campaign. One example? Captain Morgan, whose agency Real Branding did a “The Captain’s Blog” initiative…
I think society is [sadly] far more eager and willing to consume racy content and you will see more and more of it in years to come. Note, as well, that as European markets outgrow US growth… the US’ threshold for what is accepted will resemble that of Europe, not vice versa…
If I were looking for media assets, maybe I’d consider buying Playboy and making it far more Web centric.
the company has a market cap of $130M, with an enterprise value of $210M… but the crazy part is the company did $350M in revenues and $12M in net income. Not sure about the company going bankrupt, but maybe a takeover target?
Would Hef sell? Not sure, but his daughter Christine is running operations… judging by the largest holders, maybe Playboy might become in play.
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