The Brand Champion Returns to the Spotlight

Abstract

Since Hugh Hefner proposed to Playmate Kimberley Conrad in July 1988, the Playboy brand champion was absent from the spotlight where, for four decades previously, he had played a significant role in the growth of the company behind the brand. Few other brands in history had such visible and vocal brand advocates and brand guardians as Playboy did in Hugh Hefner. Much of the world saw Hugh Hefner as the living symbol of Playboy and his absence in the 1990s did not go unnoticed by consumers. Furthermore, the highly publicized changes at the Playboy Mansion discussed in Chapter 14, which had long been regarded as Disneyland for adults, added to the confusion and further clouded the Playboy brand message. Hefner’s vocal and physical denouncements of the lifestyle he led prior to marrying Conrad in 1989 were heard around the world, and many loyal customers were confused by a brand that struggled with living its own promise in the 1990s.

We live in a Playboy world today. You see it reflected on television and the Internet, in newspapers and magazines—from shows like Sex and the City, in which Sarah Jessica Parker wears a Playboy Rabbit Head necklace to Jay Lena’s nightly monologue.

Hugh Hefner, January 2000 interview in Playboy magazine