Since going public through a special purpose acquisition company nearly one year ago, the Playboy Group has reevaluated its publication, entertainment, and branding stance. In December of last year, Playboy CEO Ben Kohn gave voice to various new interests that the company would seek to leverage in order to build the brand back up to a more suitable standing.
Among the most recent initiatives for the company is devising a way to build a mansion inside the metaverse, a supposed digital landscape encompassing the internet on the decentralized Web3 platform. Kohn himself relayed back in December 2021 how the Playboy Group is expanding its sights and growing more accustomed to this new age of entertainment consumption:
"We are transforming this company into a web 3.0 company moving forward...We are going to use blockchain, NFTs and everything else as a part of our global strategy."
Playboy Group has dropped several NFT collections over the past year, coining the new tokenized Playboy logo as Rabbitars, available on the Ethereum blockchain. The company shut down its magazine production back in 2020 amid the surging pandemic and looked instead toward a new era in digital consumption: subscription service app-based entertainment, of which Playboy designed through the likes of Centerfold.
Akin to its more readily-known competitor OnlyFans, Centerfold likewise builds upon the same influence Playboy long had since the 1970s, only this time setting the stage for self-made creators. Users on Centerfold can post pictures and videos for a monthly fee, which gets split with Playboy. Centerfold allows Playboy to continue in similar ventures; it was long known for, yet remain as forward-thinking and in the future as possible.
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Still, as the Playboy Group under Kohn looks aptly towards the future, many still vie to keep Playboy's past history in the limelight. The ongoing A&E series titled "The Secrets of Playboy" attempts to dig up all the nasty underlying preambles surrounding the company amid its rise into infamy. Kohn isn't swayed, however. If anything, bad publicity is still publicity, and the Playboy Group sees itself in a very different way following the passing of Hugh Hefner.
On its own website, a letter remarks long before even the A&E series was announced on the road to which Playboy is taking its new reality, "today's Playboy is not Hugh Hefner's Playboy." The question, then, is whose Playboy is it? The fans, hopefully. It's arguably among the most recognizable brands on the face of the earth, with Kohn even comparing it to Apple and Nike. This outward affection and awareness allow Playboy Group a host of incentives for fans through various avenues. They are now rebuilding the long-beloved Playboy mansion within the digital metaverse.
This concept is nothing new to the Playboy Group, as the company has hosted several virtual parties within Decentraland, a gamified metaverse attraction that allows users to purchase land and sell them, not unlike cryptocurrency and NFTs. For Playboy, the metaverse is a new age concept that allows the company to "reach a global audience" via a paid subscription service, Kohn says to CNBC.
"As we move into 2022, we'll begin with Playboy membership and members will have a whole host of benefits moving forward and a lot of our membership will be based on the blockchain," explains Kohn in that same interview.
These incentives can include early drops and NFT auctions for Playboy members and first-line seating for digital events and the like. The company even announced not several days prior to the forthcoming Rabbitars NFT drop set for Oct. 24.
Despite its past, Playboy Group sees an avenue for extreme success going well into the future, and Kohn is duly excited for where the company is headed. It certainly wouldn't be the metaverse without a Playboy mansion.
