Client: Playboy Enterprises (Chicago)
Client: Playboy Enterprises (Chicago)
PR Team: Bender, Goldman & Helper; Smith Public Relations; and Baker
Winokur Ryder (all Los Angeles)
Campaign: Playboy’s Club Lingerie Fashion Show
Time Frame: August to November 1999
Budget: N/A
Taking a leaf, as it were, from the Victoria’s Secret book, Playboy sees
its future in multimedia events like this fashion show, which was
broadcast on cable and satellite TV and over the Internet and had a
companion video for home sale. The event, held November 16 in Los
Angeles, also presented the company with the opportunity to sell
lingerie and memberships in its online Playboy Cyber Club.
The event marked Playboy’s first effort to coordinate PR across its TV,
online and video divisions. It also was the company’s first pay-per-view
Web event. While the show was free, viewers could spend dollars 5.95 for
a ’backstage pass’ to visit models’ dressing rooms.
The goal was to drive viewers to the event and, in turn, boost revenue
of Playboy-branded products.
Strategy
The campaign focused on basic media relations, but targeted both the
trade and general press. Each of three Los Angeles-based PR firms was
given specific press segments to target: Bender, Goldman & Helper, the
video trade press; Smith PR, the online world; and Baker Winokur Ryder,
the entertainment media and TV entertainment shows. But all the pitches
emphasized the cross-media nature of the event, says Rebecca Theim,
director of corporate communications for Playboy Enterprises.
Tactics
Trade press contacts began in mid-September while online media were
alerted before October. The first all-media release was sent out October
20. In early November, 10 days before the event, 25 top-tier reporters
who hadn’t shown interest in the first wave of press contacts were sent
a Playboy martini shaker containing a piece of lingerie along with
information about the show, a video and instructions for logging on free
to the backstage part of the event. The elaborate mailing ’was
definitely worth doing,’ garnering some additional pre-event coverage,
Theim says.
A special dress rehearsal was held a day earlier than planned so TV
entertainment shows could get footage to broadcast the day of the event.
’Online reporters aren’t any different than print reporters in the
information they want,’ Theim says.
Results
The event picked up widespread coverage in such outlets as Billboard,
Hollywood Reporter, Fox News Channel and USAToday.com (in the online
tech report), in addition to mentions on The Tonight Show, The Martin
Short Show and The Roseanne Show. During the webcast, the site got
roughly 565,000 visitors. And more than 20 million page views were
recorded of the archived show in the week following the event.
Playboy will not disclose how much money it made from people signing up
for the pay-per-view portion or from related merchandise sales. Theim,
while not specifying her PR budget for the event, says Playboy spent
only a fraction of what some other recent Web events have on publicity
and ’dollar for dollar we did incredibly well.’
Future
Playboy plans a New Year’s Eve webcast from its West Coast mansion as
well as live chats, and possibly some streaming Web video, from Mardi
Gras in 2000. Promoting events that cross its various business units is
sure to increase.
’That’s definitely the direction in which the company is headed,’ Theim
says.
