PLAYBOY: Reinvention

[Alfred Urrutia]

--- Dan Stiffler <calendar-girls@mindspring.com> wrote:
...
> Let me ask a simple question when we think about the challenges facing
> PLAYBOY as it enters its second 50 years.  Is there still an audience of
> "sophisticated, urban males" in this country?  (btw, you don't have to live
> in a city to be "urban"; indeed, PLAYBOY would later use the word "urbane.")
> 
> If the answer to that question is yes, then why does PLAYBOY need to
> "reinvent" itself and make the same mistake that Esquire did before?
> 
> If the answer to that question is no, then god help us all.
> 

I think the question isn't so simple.  Or it's incomplete.  Certainly the first
part makes sense - is there still that sophisticated, urban male audience. 
Here I would answer yes, there are.  With a country this rich with this much
free time you'll always have a load of loaded urbanites.  But the second part -
why does Playboy need to reinvent itself - is making a grave assumption.  That
these current sophisticated urban males like the same things in the same ways
that their predecessors did.

They might not.  They might no longer give a shit about magazines in general or
urbanite mags with nudity in particular.  I'm not saying that's the case, I'm
saying to assume that everything operates the same way it used to is asking for
a lot of "well, the Earth must be flat therefore these equations must be wrong"
type of backwards theorizing that could answer nothing and continue down an
outdated path.

I think the first thing that Playboy Magazine has to figure out is if it *can*
still reach out to these sophisticated urban males.  Or, barring that, if it
can change the way they are reached out to therefore resetting interest in
Playboy where there might currently be none by that group.




Alfred.

=====
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"My father was a crapsmith, his father was a crapsmith and,
 BY GOD, I am a crapsmith!"
     - What StWhore's shitty dart skills were saying in the
       Firehouse.

Alfred Urrutia                     rampagingsloth@yahoo.com

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