Exclusively for iNTERGAMINGi, Stewart Darkin speaks to Reena Patel, vice president of licensing at Playboy, to find out why the global brand partnered with Microgaming and why Playboy and online gaming is a winning combination.
PLAYBOY. It is difficult to bring to mind a more instantly recognisable brand. Just hearing the name immediately conjures images of the distinctive bunny logo – on a huge range of merchandising, on billboards and of course in magazines. And now, as Playboy celebrates its 60th birthday, in the world of online gaming.
Launched in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner, Playboy magazine helped shape the evolution of American culture. A lifestyle publication from the very beginning, Playboy has always been required to tread carefully, picking out a rocky path between the top shelf of the newsstand and the intellectual populism of, say, Rolling Stone or Time.
Critics made fun of the magazine’s emphasis on its journalistic content. But contributions from the likes of Chuck Palahniuk, Margaret Atwood, Jack Kerouac, Vladimir Nabokov, Ian Fleming, PG Wodehouse and even Roald Dahl easily rebuffed lazy claims that the magazine existed only to showcase (often famous) women without their clothes.
And then there was the regular Playboy interview; accounts of revealing exchanges with Martin Luther King Jr, with then-presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and even with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the weeks before the former Beatle was killed in New York.
The publication’s photographers have included Herb Ritts, Annie Leibovitz and film director Russ Meyer. In the early seventies, an issue of Playboy sold more than seven million copies. The credentials are in no doubt and the brand has continued to move with the times.
Today, Hefner remains as editor-in-chief and the brand he created is as influential as ever, boasting “97 per cent unaided global brand awareness”. In other words, publicity you don’t have to pay for. It is one of the most recognised brands in the world and it can come as no surprise that the Playboy licensing group drives in global business of over €1bn.
Read the full article in the latest issue of iNTERGAMINGi.
