Word: playboyism
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...trinkets, for which it is only now beginning to develop a coherent marketing strategy. Recognizing that the operation must be trimmed down and reorganized, Hefner has now called in Victor Lownes, 47, a longtime crony and PEI's second largest stockholder. Officially, Lownes is director of Playboy Leisure Activities, a new division that includes the hotels and clubs, where losses have been glaring; unofficially, he is Hefner...
Lownes, a graduate of the University of Chicago, met Hefner at a party in 1954 and later gave him the idea for the Playboy clubs. Personally, he is an ultra-Playboy whose life-style even Hefner envies. As head of PEI's highly profitable club operations in England, Lownes has been living in a 42-room mansion near London and riding to work in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce. He skis in the Alps and cruises in the Mediterranean, often in the company of more than one beautiful woman. To support himself in this opulence, Lownes draws not only...
...decided to discontinue VIP, a magazine for key holders, at an estimated saving of $800,000 a year, and he has cut in half the home-office club and hotel staff by firing 50 people, including the entire "Bunny department," which once kept files and tabs on every Playboy Bunny in America...
...company is overcommitted to running all its varied businesses itself, he plans to go for more licensing and franchising deals. He is also loosening the company's grip on clubs and hotels. To boost occupancy and attract more convention business from conservative companies, he has removed the Playboy name from the Chicago and Great Gorge, N.J., hotels and opened all the four hotels to non-key holders. In the 18 clubs operated by PEI, he has encouraged individual managers to set their own motifs and has reduced the home-office take on revenues. In addition, he has repealed Hefner...
Lownes has no authority over Playboy magazine, which still brings in well over a third of corporate revenues. Playboy's circulation peaked at 7 million in late 1972; during the past six months it has averaged 5.8 million, one of the greatest reader losses in magazine history. Since that is below the circulation guarantee of 6 million, Playboy has offered to give credits to advertisers; ad revenue in the past six months has run 7.5% below a year earlier. A basic problem, ironically, seems to be the success of the sexual revolution that Hef ner worked so hard...