Sour Lemons, or Lemonade? – Playboy, Singer

by Adam Hartung | Aug 11, 2010 | Defend & Extend, Food and Drink, In the Whirlpool, Leadership, Lock-in, Television, Web/Tech

“Playboy’s Circulation drops 34%” is the Chicago Tribune headline.  Is anyone surprised?  If ever there was a brand, and business, that was out of step with current markets it has to be Playboy.  That the business still exists is a wonder.  But let’s spend a few minutes to see why Playboy has fallen on hard times, and what the alternative might have been – and could still be.

The Playboy Success Formula is really clear.  Since founded by Hugh Hefner, the company has focused on titillating the male libido with a magazine that focused on pictures of naked women, videos of same (physical videos, on-line videos and television), radio talk shows about sex, and alternative lifestyle issues such as recreational drug use.  At one time this was unique, and in a male dominated 1960s it was even tolerated. Although never mainstream, the business was very profitable early in its lifecycle.  Thus the founder kept doing more of the same, building a small empire and eventually taking the company public.

But the market shifted.  Larry Flint and others ushered in a new era of pornography altering the market for prurient, sexually oriented material.  Women in the workforce – and I’d like to think a heavy dose of decency – made public toleration of such material unacceptable.  You couldn’t read a Playboy at work, or on the airplane, and you wouldn’t have a business lunch at their clubs.  Other magazines sprung up to deal with men’s interests in automobiles, clothing, music, sports, etc. in a more acceptable – and for most people more significant and intelligent – manner.  Other lifestyle publications were developed that discussed illicit drug use and non-traditional ways of life more directly, explicitly and with greater advocacy.  The advent of cable TV and then the internet increasingly made access to the key features of Playboy’s product readily available, very inexpensive (often free) and targeted at niche audiences. 

Yet, despite these many market changes, Playboy’s founder and his daughter, the company CEOs for 40+ years, steadfastly stuck to their old Success Formula.  They kept thinking that people wanted those “bunny eared” products.  They talked a lot about the heritage of Playboy, how it broke ground in so many markets, and opened the door for lots of new competitors.  But they kept doing what the company always did – including foisting upon us the ever aging founder as a “role model” for male menopause and the anti-family aged entrepreneur.   Playboy today is what it always was – and there simply aren’t a whole lot of people with much interest in those products any more.  Nobody mismanaged the brand, the market just walked away from it.  Sort of like the demand for Geritol.

Playboy focused on its core.  And now its on the edge of bankruptcy.  The company keeps outsourcing more and more of the work, as the staff has dropped to nearly nothing, cutting costs everywhere possible.  Sales continue to decline, and the brand looks like it will soon join Polaroid and Woolworths on the heap of once famous but floundered companies.  Playboy’s fatal mistake wasn’t that it was started as a prurient men’s magazine – but rather that for 40 years its leadership kept Defending & Extending that original Success Formula despite rather dramatic market shifts.  Now, today, Playboy is a sour lemon that not many a marketer would want to be stuck promoting.

But – it didn’t have to be that way.  Just imagine if you’d been given control of Playboy 30 years ago.  What could you have done?

As soon as Hustler hit the newsstands, and the first women’s right protests developed – including the early push for the Equal Rights Amendment – it was clear that the future of the magazine was in jeopardy.  Instead of doing “more of the same” could you have considered something else?

The growth of women in the workforce meant a lot of new opportunities.  Why not jump onto that bandwagon?  If you’re really at the forefront of “lifestyle” issues, as the leadership claimed, then you would have identified that women in the workforce meant something new was brewing – a group of consumers that would have more cash, and more influence.  And not only would that be an appealing market, but so would the men who would be adjusting to new lifestyle issues as homes became dominated by 2-worker leadership.

Playboy was well positioned to be Victoria’s Secret. At a time before anybody else was really thinking about a significant market for attractive and comfortable lingerie Playboy certainly had the leading edge.  Or, even more likely, the water carrying publication for Dr. Ruth-style discussions about sexuality.  There was an emerging market for information targeted at increasingly affluent women about automobiles, stereos, apartments, resume writing, job hunting and even at-work etiquette — all topics that had been the dominant discussion areas for Playboy’s historically male readership.  Had the leadership at Playboy opened its eyes, and scanned the horizon for growth markets being developed as a result of the trends which were negatively impacting it, these leaders would have been able to create a bevy of scenarios that were filled with opportunities for growth.

It’s hard to imagine today Playboy being anything else.  But all that stopped stopped Playboy’s evolution was a commitment to its “core” – to its old Success Formula.  That the CEO for over 20 years was a well educated woman is testament to the power of “core” philosophy versus a willingness to look at market opportunities.  By keeping Playboy’s Success Formula tightly aligned with her father’s founding ideas she quite literally led the company into smaller and smaller sales with less and less profit.  The big loser was, of course, investors.  Playboy is worth very little today as Mr. Hefner hints at making a bid to take the company private once again. 

Singer was once a sewing machine company.  But when Japanese products surpassed Singer’s product capabilities and achieved a cost advantage in the 1970s, Singer leadership converted Singer into a defense contractor.  And Singer went on to multiply its value before being acquired by General Dynamics.  

IBM was an office machine company famous for mechanical typewriters and adding machines.  The founder said he would never enter computers.  Fortunately for employees and shareholders the founder’s son took the company into computers and the company flourished as competitive typewriter companies such as Smith Corona – stuck on the core business – disappeared.

There’s a time for lemons – in your tea or on a salad.  But when markets shift, lemons just turn sour.  If you want to succeed long-term you have to shift with markets.  And that might well mean making significant change.  Adding water and sugar to the lemons is a good start – as lemonade is less about lemons than what you’ve added to it.  After you open that lemonade stand, see where the market leads you. 

No matter where you start, every day offers the opportunity to head toward new, emerging markets.  No matter what your historical “core” you can literally become any business you want to become.  Coke was founded by a pharmacist who wanted to boost counter sales in his store – and it was worth a lot more than the pills he was constructing.  Those who develop scenarios about the future prepare for market shifts, understand the competitive changes and use them to identify the opportunities for a new future.  Then they use White Space teams to move the business into a new Success Formula.  Anybody can do it.  You could even have remade Playboy.  So what’s the plan for the future of your business?  More of the same …. or …..