Quick take:
- The company plans to transform its business model by going into Web 3.
- Playboy unveiled its Liquid Summer and “Rabbitars” NFT projects last year.
- It’s also aiming to compete with OnlyFans with its adult content platform, Centerfold.
Playboy has revealed plans to build a Playboy Mansion in the metaverse. The news comes five years after Hugh Hefner’s death and two years since the print magazine folded.
This won’t be the company’s first foray into Web 3 as it has previously dropped two NFT collections. Last spring, the company dropped Its first-ever NFT collection titled Liquid Summer, created in collaboration with Slimesunday. Featuring collage art that’s on-brand for Playboy, the collection sold out in three minutes.
Following the success of its first collection, the company dropped a second NFT collection in October, titled “Rabbitars”, a collection of 11,953 3D rabbits inspired by the Playboy Bunny.
It appears that Playboy is trying to shed its unsavoury reputation as a 10-part documentary Secrets of Playboy that debuted in January shines a spotlight on the company’s sordid past. The documentary features former employees, playmates and past girlfriends of the company’s founder, Hugh Hefner.
Ahead of the documentary’s release, the company’s leadership published a statement on its website, saying “today’s Playboy is not Hugh Hefner’s Playboy,” as it tries to secure its position in Web 3.
“The magazine was one product of the company,” Playboy CEO Ben Kohn told CNBC. “But it was really that rabbit head that’s worth billions and billions of dollars and not replicable. When you think about what this brand represents, from a marketing perspective, from an awareness perspective, we pretty much have 100% awareness everywhere in the world.”
While the company reported a 67% revenue growth in Q3 2021, Kohn said that the business model is broken and the company needs to reinvent itself in the digital world. It plans to do so by leveraging the brand awareness of the iconic Playboy Bunny, which Kohn has compared to instantly recognisable logos like Nike’s and Apple’s.
“I look at [the mansion] coming back first in the metaverse, because I think we can reach a global audience through that. It will be part of our membership plan,” Kohn added. “As we move into 2022, we’ll begin with Playboy membership and members will have a whole host of benefits moving forward and a lot of our membership will be based on blockchain.”
Metaverse plans aside, Playboy launched its adult content media platform Centerfold in December last year to compete with OnlyFans. The platform offers personal content subscriptions and allows creators to interact directly with their fans. Rapper Cardi B serves as the platform’s Founding Creative Director as the company is counting on her clout to reach a wider audience.
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