Want to tap the tremendous millennial opportunity on every social channel? Hear from Playboy’s Chief Digital Officer and CRO how a revamp of their social strategy dropped their average user age from 47 to just 30 years old and their social media presence grew from 11M to 29M in just one year.
Playboy was recently named a Top 15 Social Brand by Shareablee — and naked women have nothing to do with it. Surprised?
When Robin Zucker joined Playboy in 2013 as the senior vice president, digital media, with the goal of building the iconic brand’s audience, she found that that they had missed targeting — and been mistargeting — their real audience. The brand already had tremendous social engagement, with a younger-skewing audience, and all of it was actually safe for work — nightlife, style, and even fully clothed women.
So in August 2014, the nudity was yanked from both the pages of the magazine and digital properties, social engagement across platforms became their focus, and the numbers soared.
By January 2015, site traffic went from 5.5 million unique users to 21.5 million, they ratcheted up over 6 million video views, and built an audience of nearly 30 million followers across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, SnapChat, and Tumblr. The brand’s traffic is now 75 percent mobile, with men under 34 making up 60 percent of their fans.
For Zucker, it wasn’t about where the fans were — it was about connecting with the audience on the platforms on which they were spending the most time, bringing them the content they were searching for. They had to go beyond simple questions of site traffic, and hit the metrics that mattered: How many people are we reaching, and how are we telling our story?
The strategy: to create shareable, branded content that resonates across every channel and platform. They leverage their iconic Playmate brand ambassadors, which of course gives them a leg up, but they focus on their signature voice and sophisticated mix of entertainment, lifestyle, humor, and politics, as well as offer behind-the-scenes, insider glimpses into the Playboy lifestyle.
While its key demographic is millennial men, Matt Mastrangelo, Playboy’s chief revenue officer, noted that the company is working to reach women in search of smart content and looking for licensed loungewear.
The lesson? Any successful brand has to employ these same skills — identify an audience, keep up with consumer expectations, and deliver a consistent, branded, and engaging customer experience across all channels, because no single channel can provide that kind of all-encompassing brand identity customers take most seriously.
To learn more about nailing down your brand identity, creating shareable touchpoints, and leveraging anonymous, probabilistic, and accurate identity data, join Phillip Morelock, Chief Digital Officer and CRO, Playboy, and Stewart Rogers, Director of Marketing Technology, in our latest free, interactive VB Live event.
Don’t miss out!
In this VB Live event, you’ll:
- Learn how consumers move between channels, and how to manage it
- Understand how to measure social success
- Leverage the community without cannibalising the audience
Speakers:
- Phillip Morelock, Chief Digital Officer and CRO, Playboy
- Stewart Rogers, Director of Marketing Technology for VentureBeat
Moderator:
- Wendy Schuchart, Analyst, VentureBeat