Playboy's "safe for work" online reinvention

This event report shows how Playboy, the men's magazine and online publisher, drove huge growth in its digital traffic - especially among millennials - by adopting a "safe for work" policy on the web.

Playboy's "safe for work" online reinvention

Stephen WhitesideWarc

Perhaps the best-known line about Playboy is the protest, "I read it for the articles."

But when the brand relaunched its website in August 2014, it actively embraced this principle – a decision that ultimately helped the publisher quadruple traffic levels within four months. "It's really thanks to [being] PG-13 – safe for work," Robin Zucker, Playboy's svp/digital marketing, told delegates at the ClickZ Live conference in New York.

"There is no nudity on our site … Now, there's definitely scantily-clad women in certain sections, but there's absolutely no...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands