Branding Case Study: Playboy
The good news about starting a business is that you’re not the first one to do it. Many companies have come before you and left behind a trail of mistakes to avoid, lessons to learn, and great business ideas that you can glean insight from. The ways that successful companies have approached branding can be especially helpful to look analyze. Even though your company will need to have its own strategy and voice — looking at the branding successes of others can illustrate effective use of some of the most important branding principles. Let’s look at the great business ideas of a particularly iconic brand: Playboy.
Infuse Your Company with Personality
Regardless of how you feel about Playboy, there is no denying that Hugh Hefner succeeded in making his brand an instantly recognizable household name. This is due in no small part to the way Hefner drew on his own personality to create the brand. His company is called Playboy, so Hefner situated himself as the ultimate realization of the playboy lifestyle, living in a beautiful mansion with beautiful women. Hefner advertised the fact that he lived this way by writing about it in the magazine and appearing on TV throughout his career, to show people how fun it is to be him.
Associate Your Brand with a Lifestyle
Hefner’s personality-based strategy sent a significant message about what his brand could do for its customers. If you bought Playboy’s magazines and products, you could be like Hugh Hefner, who had an amazing life that many men could only dream about. No matter what your company’s product or service is, you should find a way to connect it to a bigger picture about the possibilities it provides to people.
Have a Philosophy, Not Just a Product
While it’s easy to accuse Playboy of being a shallow company with a shallow mission, Hefner made sure that people knew that his business was more significant to him–and to the world–than simply providing pictures of hot women. His philosophy fought censorship, advocated for civil rights and sexual freedom, and even came to promote modern feminism. Whether you believe that Playboy accomplishes something culturally important or not, Hefner believed that he had great business ideas that were changing the world for the better, and it showed in everything he did.
Today, the Playboy name and logo are utterly iconic. Even if you don’t aspire to create a business with the same scope, you can borrow some of the great business ideas of Playboy by considering their underlying philosophy. If you’re starting a company and need help building a brand that’s solid, contact A Hundred Monkeys to find out how we can help.
