November 12th, 2008, 6 Comments »
Playboy is among the many periodicals making job and budget cuts this year:
Playboy Enterprises Inc. disclosed in a Wednesday regulatory filing that upcoming cost-cutting measures will include eliminating 55 jobs at the Chicago publishing and entertainment concern.
In the Securities and Exchange Commission document, Playboy said that a plan to reduce annual costs by $10 million is being increased to $12 million “in light of current economic and media conditions.”
In fairness, there’s more to Playboy than a magazine, but the news got me thinking about the 55-year-old periodical. I don’t know that it’s in any serious trouble. According to Wikipedia, it’s got a circulation of 3 million, down from a high of 7.1 million in 1972. That’s still better than, say, Maxim (2.5 million), Esquire (700,000) or Details (500,000).
But let’s imagine that the magazine is struggling. I got to thinking about what radical action I’d undertake to right the ship. The first thing that occurred to me: get rid of the naked women.
“But,” says the VP of Marketing, “the naked women are our brand! They’re what differentiates us from Maxim et al!”
Nay, I say. Nudity stopped being a differentiator some time in the mid-nineties, when the web became a den of inequity and rife with porn. As any web surfer knows, there’s all forms of nudity to be found for free on the web, from the gentlest erotica to the weirdest fetish. The same is true for periodicals, obviously. There’s Hustler, obviously, but even mainstream magazines like Maxim are often exactly two exposed nipples away from precisely mimicking the images in Playboy.
So, I’m unconvinced that anybody really buys the magazine for the pictures anymore. They buy it for the fantastic essays, interviews and short fiction.
Personally, I’d feel still feel a little sheepish buying an issue of Playboy and a lot sheepish reading it on the bus. Maybe Playboy ought to drop the naked photos altogether, and focus on what really differentiates them from the herd?
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May 12th, 2008, 3 Comments »
Seth points us at Brand Tags, a site with a simple premise. It shows you a brand, and you enter one word or phrase which pops into your head that’s associated with that brand. It’s a kind of brand association, and makes for a amusing snapshot of a brand’s health and welfare.
Consider, for example, the prominence of ‘crap’ and ‘lame’ on MySpace’s results page. Or the happy coincidence of ‘awesome’ and ‘boring’ on NPR’s page. Playboy produces the kind of terms you’d expect.
Are the results actually useful to marketers? Probably not, though I could see somebody wielding them as evidence in an internal discussion about brand perceptions. Maybe, for example, your boss at Volkswagen believes that everybody’s over the associations with Hitler. Not so much.
If, like me, you just want to browse some brands, I lifted this list of links to the results pages for each brand:
ABC // Absolut // Adidas // Adobe // AIM // Allstate // Amazon // American Airlines // American Express // American Idol // AOL // Apple // AT&T // Audi // Bacardi // Banana Republic // Band-Aid // Bank of America // BBC // Beijing 2008 // Best Buy // Bic // BlackBerry // Blockbuster // Bloomingdales // BMW // BP // Bravo // British Airways // Bud Light // Budweiser // Burger King // Burt’s Bees // Burton // Cadillac // Capital One // Casio // Chase // Chevron // Citibank // Clorox // CNN // Coca-Cola // Comcast // Continental Airlines // Converse // Corona // Crest // Dell // Delta // Diesel // Digg // Discovery Channel // Disney // Dodge // Doritos // Dyson // eBay // ESPN // Evian // Exxon // Facebook // FedEx // Ferrari // Firefox // Flickr // Ford // Gap // Gatorade // GE // Geek Squad // Geico // Google // Guinness // H & M // Harley-Davidson // Heineken // Hilton // Holiday Inn // Home Depot // HP // Hyundai // IBM // Ikea // Intel // Internet Explorer // Jaguar // JetBlue // Johnnie Walker // Johnson & Johnson // Jordan // Kmart // Kodak // Lacoste // Levis // LG // London 2012 // Louis Vuitton // Marriott // Mastercard // McDonalds // Mercedes // Microsoft // Miller Lite // Motorola // MSN // MTV // MySpace // NASA // Nautica // NBC // Netflix // Neutrogena // New Balance // Nike // Nintendo // Nissan // North Face // NPR // Pabst // Patagonia // PBS // Pepsi // Pfizer // Pizza Hut // Playboy // Playstation // Poland Spring // Porsche // Progressive // Puma // Red Bull // Red Lobster // Rolex // Saab // Safeway // Samsung // Sears // Second Life // Sephora // Sharper Image // Shell // Skype // Sony // Southwest Airlines // Splenda // Sprite // Staples // Starbucks // Subway // T-Mobile // Taco Bell // Target // Tommy Hilfiger // Toyota // Twitter // Umbro // United States Postal Service // UPS // USA Today // Verizon // VH1 // Virgin // Visa // Volkswagen // Wachovia // Wal Mart // Whole Foods // Wikipedia // Wordpress // Xbox // Yahoo! // YouTube //
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