On celebrity and sales

[Peggy Wilkins]

Dan made some comments about celebrities and PLAYBOY, the best of
which I thought was:

    Dan> The real problem with PLAYBOY's addiction to celebrity is
    Dan> that the magazine is willing to take anyone with the faintest
    Dan> hint of celebrity status and promote her on the cover.
    Dan> ... And give this just a moment's thought: why should an
    Dan> A-list celebrity strip for PLAYBOY when the magazine has been
    Dan> cavorting with C-listers?

I think this point is well worth PLAYBOY's consideration when they are
making their decisions about to whom to offer their money for
pictorial features.  I think that many of the "celebrities" PLAYBOY
has featured in recent years did little to enhance PLAYBOY's
reputation.

    Dan> PLAYBOY should kick its habit.  Go cold turkey.  Sure, there
    Dan> would be withdrawal.  But let the word out that, when PLAYBOY
    Dan> once again starts running celebrity pictorials, the models
    Dan> will be established A-listers.  No more pick-ups at the
    Dan> corner of Tabloid and Cable.
  
Why not feature the A-listers right away?  Or maybe some up-and-coming
potential A-listers?  I don't see why having a break would benefit
PLAYBOY.  Remember that the evidence indicates that newsstand sales
are directly correlated to celebrity covers.  We can't ignore that one
of the goals they are after right now is to increase newsstand sales.

I was thinking of the last time we had an extended discussion about
celebrities in PLAYBOY -- it was over the June issue, and Sarah
Kozer's PMOY-usurping cover.  I remember being told by circulation
director Larry Djerf that the the PMOY cover issues are consistently
the lowest selling issues, year after year.  It occurred to me in
remembering this now that there may be one flaw in their
interpretation of the facts here.  Note that the PMOY almost always
(with rare exceptions) is announced in the June issue.  How do they
know that the low sales aren't seasonally related?  My understanding
is that newsstand sales always slow down in the warmer months.  I
would be interested in seeing if they moved the PMOY issue a month or
(better yet) two earlier, if the sales would improve.  An April issue
PMOY shouldn't be impossible to realize, especially now that they are
of a frame of mind where they are doing faster pictorial production
(as with the fast turnaround time for Survivor's Jenna/Heidi in the
August issue).  (If it's too hard to get both a pictorial and a video
produced in this time frame, why not let the video lag behind for a
second wave of publicity?)  Of course I don't want to see the quality
of the PMOY feature decline in a rush to get it out, but with proper
planning I think this could be done while maintaining high quality.
Give an earlier PMOY a try and see if that doesn't realize
significantly higher sales than the June issues have seen.

Peggy Wilkins
mozart@lib.uchicago.edu