Summary: Playboy magazine launched in 1953 with Marilyn Monroe on its first cover. It grew quickly into one of the world's most recognizable brands because of bunny costumes and nude centerfolds. Playboy influenced the culture of "sex, drugs and rock n' roll". In its prime, it sold 7 million copies a month. Now it sells 800,000 copies a month. They now have to sell their product to a new generation of consumers. Playboy just announced that they're reinventing their magazine for next year and will no longer print fully nude pictures of women. The times have changed since Playboy's launch, and, according to the author of this article, "you innovate or you become irrelevant". Companies who don't innovate in response to changing consumer behavior are committing business suicide (take Blockbuster, for example), so Playboy really has no choice. Robin Zucker, senior VP of digital marketing, knows that if you want people to read your content, you should make it Web-friendly and safe for work. With Zucker leading, Playboy relaunched its website "safe for work" in 2014. Everything is now PG-13 and nudity-free. This strategy worked because, after relaunch, Playboy saw a 258% jump in unique visitors, the average age of its readers went from 47 to just over 30, and its Web traffic jumped from 4 million to 16 million users per month. The reason behind this is the fact that the Number 1 source of traffic to most websites are social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Facebook drives more traffic to media websites than Google itself. None of those social networks allow nudity, so it's understandable Zucker wanted to make this change. Scott Flanders, CEO of Playboy, said the magazine is going to answer the question: "If you take nudity out, what's left?
Analysis: The author of this article is CNN Commentator Mel Robbins, who wrote this on Friday, October 16th. The author does not seem biased because there is nothing to be biased about for this event. This is an extremely intelligent business decision for Playboy. With the invention of social media and its constant gaining of popularity, Playboy has to abide by their rules to get the most website and magazine viewers. If they don't allow nudity, then Playboy has to follow this to make people able to get to their website while using these social medias. This reminds me of Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin. He invented it because the demand for cotton grew increasingly higher and hand-picking didn't meet demand. With the cotton gin, cotton could be distributed faster, more efficiently, and require less labor. Like Playboy, Whitney realized that the times were changing, so he reinvented something to keep up with the modern world and meet the consumer's interests.
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/13/opinions/robbins-playboy-no-more-nudity/index.html#
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