The team behind a relaunched Playboy magazine have spoken about their plans for a more “inclusive” iteration of a title made famous for dressing up women as rabbits.
The first issue of the relaunched Playboy featuring Colombian pop superstar Karol G was released in April and sold out a modest print run.
Editor-in-chief and chief brand officer Phillip Picardi told Press Gazette: “Dropping a Playboy cover has the kind of impact that I truly have never seen in my career, even when I was working at Condé Nast,” referring to his time leading Teen Vogue and Them.
“Putting a woman on the cover of Playboy in this day and age drives the kind of engagement and press that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like this before.”
The second issue, featuring model and actress Cara Delevingne on the cover wearing nothing but a latex corset, was revealed this week and will have a slightly larger print run.
Picardi and David Miller, president of media and brand, were hired this year to revive Playboy focusing on what Picardi said “initially drove its prestige and its buzz and its interest and its loyalty, which was of course its storytelling” via the print magazine.
But he added that they also “needed to expand that vision” into digital, social and video.
‘There’s always been a difference between Playboy and porn’
Picardi described Playboy’s 73-year heritage as showcasing “the art of the erotic and portraying the art of desire”.
He added: “There’s always been a difference between Playboy and porn, especially the kinds of porn that are really prevalent today and that people have access to just by having a Twitter account or a Reddit account… and so I actually found the challenge of bringing back an artfulness and a thoughtfulness to nudity to be super exciting as a creative.”
Playboy continues to feature Playmates of the month, the models that receive star billing in the magazine. Their shoots are also showcased on the brand’s website and social media alongside models from the archive.
Picardi said Playmates and cover stars have control over how much of their bodies they show and that those who appear nude are “fully involved” in the creative process including having approval over photographers and stylists – most of whom so far have been women themselves.
He said: “I stop short of calling what we do at Playboy feminist, because I think that’s a loaded term, and I’m sure many people would disagree with that qualification.
“But what I will say is what our approach with nudity has always been: that it is up to a woman how much she has to show on set… when we make sure that the permission lies with the woman herself, we’re always surprised that she feels very liberated to make the calls and and do what she wants to do, which is often showing more than we expected or thought of.”
Picardi continued: “I think you can also see a deep intentionality with our casting of wanting – and I’m not saying that we are subversive in any way with our with our casting, this is still Playboy – but it’s definitely a look that I feel like is not modified to an extent that you might expect from maybe some of Playboy’s old competitors from the 1990s and early 2000s.
“And so there just is an authenticity and a rawness to the images that I’ve gotten really good feedback about. Not just from men, but outstanding feedback from women.”
Targeting women as well as men
Picardi said the core target audience is men aged between 25 and 45 but that women are actually the “most important halo audience” and the Tiktok account is skewing female.
He explained: “Unless women would also find our content interesting and dynamic, and be glad that they would have a man reading this content, we will not succeed in our brand mission and our brand promise which is to be a magazine for men that is actually centred on women and the desire of women.”
Perhaps the most iconic part of Playboy’s heyday were the Playboy Bunnies: women dressed lingerie with bowties, rabbit ears and tails who worked in the Playboy Clubs (primarily in the 1960s-80s), some of whom featured in the magazine.
Picardi said the aim is to bring back the Playboy Bunnies as something like an ambassador programme through which the women would “basically become like contributing editors to the Playboy universe and are showing up on social and on video”.
He also said they are planning a video series called “Bunny on the Street” for which they want to have a Playboy Bunny in a nightlife destination asking men and women questions about their dating and sex lives.
“Bunny on the Green” would be similar but see her “wreak havoc on a golf course”, Picardi said. “I’ve imagined it very much as The Simple Life meets Billy on the Street, but on a golf course.”
Picardi said there is “incredible journalism” in his Playboy too and cited work on safe drug-taking in the context of the fentanyl crisis in the US.
He said that “editorially we are starting with the most obvious things that have made Playboy a success from the beginning” with old franchises like 20 Questions (recently featuring David Sedaris) and the Playboy interview.
This means the brand is being “done in a new way, but it feels familiar”.
Picardi added: “I’m really hoping that Playboy can be the only publication that is uniquely qualified to invite our readers to reach out and touch each other, and that can be, of course, consensually and sexually, and that can also just be about the the need to gather and have human interactions and prioritise the value of human relationships at a moment where they’re just actively being devalued.”
Playboy mag relaunch to bring ‘full flywheel effect’ to licensing business
Alongside Picardi, Playboy currently employs just one other full-time editorial employee and they work with freelance journalists. On the business side with Miller, two people are about to be hired relating to licensing and subscription acquisition.
Job adverts are currently live for an art director and director, audience strategy.
Miller described the new Playboy as on a “disciplined growth path” saying they won’t “overextend” too quickly. “We’re doing a lot of test, learn, and then iterate and grow from there.”
Parent company Playboy Inc has been running an “asset-light model” based on licensing, having outsourced what Miller described as the more “adult” businesses: Playboy Club (which connects creators with fans similar to Only Fans), porn TV and video brand Playboy TV and Playboy Plus (which gives paying subscribers access to images and video). He said this model has given it a “much stronger financial foundation”.
In 2025 the company made $120.9m (up 4% year on year) and made a net loss of $12.7m, compared to $79.4m in 2024.
The print magazine reduced frequency from monthly to quarterly in 2019 and then closed in March 2020 as CEO Ben Kohn said the Playboy brand had “become far more than a magazine” and the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated conversations they were already having.
Playboy put out special print issues last year before Kohn brought in the new team to refresh the media side of the business.
Today, Miller said the Playboy magazine and digital relaunch will lead to a “full flywheel effect” that includes “leveraging those Playmates and the bunnies across all of these different platforms to further the brand”.
He said: “When I look at the licensing businesses, the opportunities for events and other activations, the number of sponsors, and just interest in the brand overall, let alone what we could build from a consumer perspective, it just became really, really interesting to think about the whole flywheel that we can develop.”
Of events, Miller said they are considering opportunities to revive a Playboy parties-style experience, host golf tournaments, and go into thought leadership. The team is already doing research on the “sex recession” with the Kinsey Institute.
But he said, similarly to Picardi, that they want to make the brand “respectful, and we want to make it modern, and feel like it’s inviting and inclusive for all individuals”.
Playboy digital subscriptions ‘nascent’ but archive content popular
Digital subscriptions were launched just before the April print issue was released and Miller described them as “nascent”.
A digital-only subscription, which includes the full Playboy archive from 1953, full access to the website including its Playmates of the month and digital magazine issues, costs $59.99 per year with an offer currently on for $24.99. Print plus digital costs $99.99 a year. Some online content is available for free, with content involving nude images mainly paywalled.
Miller said: “We’re more interested and focused in the short term on getting the brand in front of people. The subscribers will come as they are reintroduced to the brand, see the quality of the content that Phillip and team are creating, and then we’ll really look to invest in that subscription acquisition and growth in future years.”
But in the meantime having subscriptions, he added, “allows us to better understand the audiences”.
Picardi said the archive content is a big subscription driver. “A lot of our audience who are converting for subscriptions are Playboy’s target audience and people who are tried and true Playboy customers and have been for potentially decades and are excited to see the magazine pictorials of their heyday back and available to them on their phones.”
Playboy also now has a Substack newsletter sharing both new and archive features and images.
Overall Picardi said they are “basically operating a start-up culture in what is a legacy and iconic brand… if you overinvest in the front, you run out of steam, and it is hard to keep up momentum as you develop. And we really believe that there is a long game to be played for the revival of Playboy.
“So year one we are looking at this incredible print product that we have as this lever to pull and this celebrity and iconic leverage to play with that drives conversation and audience growth and serves as a proof of concept for the rest of the exciting things that are very low-hanging fruit that we can activate to show real momentum.”
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
