No more nudity.
The notorious magazine Playboy made this announcement on 13 October.
For a United States magazine which had made millions, since 1953, by the sheer exploitation of the female form, this change of policy – of shunning its own core competency - must have been a weighty decision.
But we know this is not a moral decision. This is a business decision.
After all, when maintaining a good bottom-line becomes a bare necessity – pun unintended - what else can you expect?
Playboy’s founder hedonist Hugh Hefner had, for decades, cashed in on the pictures of naked women in various media and had started many allied businesses. But, evidently, in this day and age, nudity does not sell anymore. At least, not in the conventional way.
Even though, time and again, Hefner used to remind people that his magazine, which he founded with 1000 dollars borrowed from his mother, is a men’s lifestyle magazine, people always felt they knew him, and his magazine, better.
Even though writings of Arthur C. Clarke, Ian Fleming, Vladimir Nabokov, Truman Capote, Saul Bellow, P. G. Wodehouse, Haruki Murakami, Ray Bradbury, John Updike and Margaret Atwood have all appeared in Playboy, many readers keep talking only about the pictures of Marilyn Monroe, Bo Derek, Kim Bassinger, Madonna, Pamela Anderson and Jenny McCarthy.
Even though interviews with Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Jimmy Carter, John Lennon and Yoko Ono had featured in it, people are still unable to remove the sleaze-tag attached to this publication. And that is because, as we can see, he had always wanted to overplay the sleaze part.
Now 89, the old man Hugh Hefner, when he was young, had written in his first editor’s letter, in 1953, that the magazine is for men fond of quiet discussions “on Picasso, Nietzche, jazz, [and] sex.” But, was it?
Over twenty five years ago, an average young man in the western world would have been willing to pay for a sleazy magazine to get his thrills. But today - from his laptop, tablet and mobile phone - he can access much more varied content in high definition, on the web; sometimes without paying a cent.
If video had killed the radio star, the Internet has been ruthlessly slaying the print media giants, for quite a while now. In fact, it is a wonder that some print mags are still surviving.
Playboy, I understand, used to sell 7 million copies in its hay days. Today, its circulation is barely 800,000.
With changing times, tastes and technologies, it is foolish to hang on to your product offerings without innovating and adapting to times. Just look at Kodak. It had stuck to photo film and photo paper, and has become completely bankrupt now. Their entry into digital cameras came in too late, and too slow.
We see Hefner’s kingdom being finally brought to its knees not by preachers of morality, but the augurs of inevitability and the tides of technology.
What Hefner’s ilk really wants now is to sustain the Playboy brand and logo of "the stylized bowtie’d bunny".
Playboy Enterprises makes more money on licensing deals today than on the magazine. Like on low-end luxury apparel and beauty products, as well as branded cocktail lounges.
In 2014, License! Global magazine ranked Playboy at 42nd on a list of the top 150 global licensors. All this business is based on the lifestyle associated with brand.
Therein lies the rationale for this new decision. A decision to sustain brand bunny that's being badly battered.
