《花花公子》停刊裸照的真正原因

    性，当然是卖点，但前提是免费。

    上周早些时候，《花花公子》表示将停止刊登全裸照，以便重塑这个衰落帝国的品牌。花花公子公司首席执行官斯科特·佛兰德斯说：“1953年休·海夫纳推出《花花公子》杂志时的政治氛围和性观念目前几乎已经荡然无存。”

    不过，这番调整和女权主义者的胜利基本上没有关系，而完全是因为最终认识到这是一个数字世界以及维持一种过时经营模式的成本。人们普遍认为休·海夫纳是性革命的奠基人。1953年《花花公子》在封面上刊登了玛丽莲·梦露的裸照，这让整个世界大为震惊。但让海夫纳成为先锋人物的经营模式确实已经过时。埋葬了这本杂志的正是它亲手创造的文化。

    对40岁以上的人来说，《花花公子》曾经有一种近似于神秘而又禁忌的魅力。它令人渴望垂涎，却不敢公开示人。如果运气好，偶尔能在父亲床底下或者大孩子们隐秘据点寻觅到它的踪影。现在看来，这种情形甚至会引人发笑，因为如今在网上免费色情内容处处可见，免费制作这些内容的“业余”公司也比比皆是。

    对《花花公子》来说，幸运的一点是它一直都不是纯粹的裸照刊物。尽管有个老笑话说男人“为了里面的文章才看《花花公子》”，但这实际上并非完全杜撰。为“正好”喜欢欣赏裸体女性的文艺男而创立也一直是这本杂志的卖点之一。一直以来，《花花公子》对爵士乐大师迈尔斯·戴维斯和史蒂夫·乔布斯等名人进行了突破性采访，并且不断刊登著名作家的文章，比如当代最有才华和思想的女作家玛格丽特·阿特伍德、“垮掉的一代”代表人物杰克·凯鲁亚克和20世纪伟大的记者诺曼·梅勒，这是它的一大未得到充分关注的成就。

    情势所需，不得不变

    然而，美国的文化变迁完全出乎海夫纳的预料。性并未真正找到销路，对性取向和性别身份的接受及其流行则重新定义了文化常态。据福克斯新闻网报道，成人娱乐经济的崩溃不光影响到了《花花公子》，色情行业本身的成功正很大程度上依赖名人拍摄的色情录像。

    在改变自身品牌形象的过程中，花花公子似乎已经发现，过去五年中出现的那些颠覆性企业，比如Uber和AirBnB等，正是利用了那些过时公司的弱点并成功填补了市场空缺。花花公子也想做到这一点。

    该公司管理层似乎终于意识到，就连历史悠久的公司也需要创新，否则就会落后于时代。大多数网站的最大流量来源都是Facebook、推特和Instagram这样的社交网络，，而且这些平台都拒绝色情。去年夏天，《花花公子》杂志网站撤除了所有裸照。结果表明，这恰好成了一次非常成功的试验。《纽约时报》引述该公司管理人士的话说，撤掉裸照后，《花花公子》在线读者的平均年龄从47岁降到了30岁，也就是所有公司都想争取的八零后群体，该杂志网站的月浏览量也达到1600万人次，是此前的四倍。

    重塑品牌能起作用吗？

    尽管花花公子目前的品牌形象几乎和婚前性行为一样不上台面，但这本实体杂志需要和自家网站实现内容统一，并为这个品牌增添一些体面的色彩。没人希望因为在地铁上看《花花公子》而被视为变态。这种观念能否得到扭转仍有待观察。

    改变经营模式，完全集中于深度新闻报道和高档次艺术照，也就意味着和《纽约客》以及《名利场》（本月的《名利场》刊登了孕妈卡戴珊“迷人而且艺术气息浓厚”的裸照，因此备受关注并大获好评）等知名品牌展开竞争，这对花花公子来说无异于一次赌博，其结果或是打动进而吸引广告主和读者重拾这本杂志，或是被奚落为“出卖自己”，而且与海夫纳创立的精神和遗风背道而驰。

    此外，接受《纽约邮报》采访时，报刊发行专家约翰·哈林顿对花花公子转型的评价是：“我觉得沃尔玛怎么也不会卖《花花公子》。它也许已经出现在了一些书店和加油站里，但我想它并不会进入主要的超市流通领域。他们这样做的效果可能太小，时间也可能太晚了。”

    一场豪赌

    改头换面的《花花公子》能让以往对其嗤之以鼻的读者对它刮目相看吗？比如女性读者以及八零后和九零后？这是一场豪赌，但（在任何行业）过时企业创新都是生存的关键。然而，新《花花公子》的美妙之处则可能是它比自己所愿意承认的更像原来的《花花公子》。（财富中文网）

    作者尼尔·鲍威尔是马克杯创意工作室Mugnacious联合创始人，也是一位获奖产品设计师和艺术家，其作品为史密森尼学会的库珀-休伊特设计博物馆永久收藏。

    译者：Charlie

    校对：詹妮

    Sure, sex sells. As long as it’s free.

    Earlier this week, Playboy announced that it will do away with full nudity in an effort to rebrand its fallen empire. “The political and sexual climate of 1953, the year Hugh Hefner introduced Playboy to the world, bears almost no resemblance to today,” said Playboy Enterprises CEO Scott Flanders.

    The shift, however, has little to do with feminist wins and everything to do with finally understanding our digital world and the cost of an outdated business model. Hugh Hefner is widely considered to be the founding father of the sexual revolution – he shocked the world with a nude of cover of Marilyn Monroe in 1953 – but the business model that made Hefner a pioneer is just obsolete. The publication has been buried by the very culture it created.

    To those of us over the age of say, 40, Playboy once held an almost mystical, forbidden fascination. It was something to be coveted, hidden away, and with any luck, occasionally stumbled upon under your dad’s bed or in some older kid’s secluded hangout. This is almost laughable now, as we live in a world where porn is so widely available for free on the net and produced so widely for free by “amateur” companies.

    Fortunately for Playboy, it was never entirely about nudity. While the long-running joke is that men “read it for the articles” – that actually isn’t completely false. One of its selling points has been that the magazine was created for literate, cultured men who also happened to enjoy photos of nude ladies. An under-publicized and notable accomplishment of the magazine is that it has a surprising history of groundbreaking interviews with luminaries such as Miles Davis and Steve Jobs and has featured the work of famed writers including Margaret Atwood, Jack Kerouac and Norman Mailer.

    Change is necessary

    But, America has undergone a cultural shift that Hef could never have predicted ––sex doesn’t actually sell, and acceptance and prevalence of both sexual orientation and gender identity has redefined cultural norms. The economic collapse of the adult entertainment world hasn’t just affected Playboy; according to a report from Fox News, the porn industry in itself is heavily succeeding on the back of celebrity sex tapes.

    In changing Playboy’s brand identity, the company seems to understand that disruptive businesses that have emerged in the last five years — Uber, AirBnB and Seamless, to name a few – have exploited and successfully filled a void in outdated business weaknesses. And Playboy wants to do this too.

    It seems that Playboy execs finally realized that even legacy companies need to innovate or become irrelevant. The number one source of traffic to most websites is social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – platforms that forbid nudity. In what happened to be a very successful experiment, the magazine already phased out nudity on their website last summer, and the results speak for themselves. According to executives quoted by The New York Times, once they got rid of online nudity the average age of [Playboy’s] online reader dropped to age 30 – the coveted millennial demo – from age 47, and web traffic quadrupled from four million to 16 million monthly visitors.

    Will the rebranding work?

    Though Playboy is now thought to be about as scandalous as pre-marital sex, the magazine nonetheless needs to align with its web presence and at the same time, gain an air of respectability for the brand. No one wants to be seen as the “creep” reading Playboy on the subway. It remains to be seen whether or not that perception can be changed.

    Changing its business model to solely concentrate on in-depth journalism and artful, high-end photography – pitting itself against established brands like the The New Yorker and Vanity Fair (which just received a ton of great publicityand glowing articles for publishing “glamorous and artistic” nude photos of a pregnant Kourtney Kardashian in this month’s issue ) is a gamble, and can go one of two ways: by either impressing and subsequently luring advertisers and readers back into their pages or being ridiculed for “selling out” and going against the very ethos and legacy Hefner established.

    Additionally, in an interview with the New York Post, circulation expert John Harrington said this of the remodel: “I don’t think Walmart will ever carry it. There may be a few bookstores and gas stations that start carrying it, but I don’t see it going on sale in major supermarket chains anytime. It may be a case of too little, too late.”

    Big gamble

    Will Playboy 2.0 win over women, millennials and other demographics that have traditionally turned their nose up at the magazine? It’s a tremendous gamble, but innovating an outdated business model (in any industry) is crucial for survival. The beauty of the new Playboy 2.0 , though, is that it’s probably quite a bit more like the old Playboy than they’d like to admit.

    Neil Powell is the co-founder of Mugnacious; an award-winning product designer and a fine artist whose work is in the permanent collection of The Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum.