A survey conducted on behalf of Playgirl amongst women aged 18-40 found that women are not interested in looking at ‘men's bits’ and would rather look at a man's chest or eyes. With this in mind, Mel and Dinah contacted me to find out if I wanted to join their duo. I wasn’t certain; magazines and newspapers are in a bit of a crisis. My last trip to the Guardian had me witness their literary editor wild eyed about maximising story ideas in all media formats. But then Mel and Dinah showed me their vision for UK Playgirl: a woman’s lifestyle magazine, sprinkled with hunks run by three playgirls. I knew they’d found not just a gap in the magazine publishing industry, but also a marketing strategy created through the simple fact that we were three enthusiastic women, who didn’t consider interviewing hunks particularly hard work.
Sick of magazines that sold pipe dreams, we decided to focus on high street brands rather than haute couture. This affected our choice of pricing: £2.99, but also our house voice. We agreed we wanted to talk horizontally, rather than vertically to our readers. We didn’t want an ‘expert’ to ‘dummy’ style like Psychologies Magazine, a ‘snob’ to ‘wannabe snob’ like Tatler, or even an ‘achingly cool person’ to ‘everyone else’ like Dazed and Confused. So many magazines seem to be convinced they’re not magazines. They think they are objects d’art, paper version of the internet, newspaper with glossy covers or coffee table book you don’t dare throw away. Some are so thick you might as well be carrying the Who’s Who and when Vogue came through the letterbox this Christmas with a printed A4 page all about the virtues of Tom Ford, I wondered if the editorial team had gone on holiday early and let the advertising department run the place.
The three of us wanted to see Playgirl Magazine crumpled up in the bus, under sofas, well read, well loved, but discardable, like a magazine should be.
Our horizontal approach meant that for Issue 01 we wrote about Lemar’s previous career at NatWest and as a gutter salesman before becoming a singer. Our biographical feature on Robert Downey Jr looked at his struggle with addiction and Robert Pattinson is shown to be a normal guy despite being in yet another blockbuster. Our author interview included dating tips as well as writing tips and our -on the street- interviews are all real people. The stars are there, but blended in with practical editorial and our focus on them is on the journey that got them to where they are now, rather than allowing their press team to regurgitate nonsense.
That being said, we didn’t want to dilute the name Playgirl completely. Luckily the name proved an irresistible pull to the male celebrities and we found them more than willing to take part. By interviewing them, all three of us blonds at once, we were in effect doing marketing, but flipping the power relations associations with Playboy’s US show The Girls Next Door on its head. The only star who turned us down was because he had just broken up (again) with his girlfriend (not mentioning any names) and was too afraid of labelling himself ‘hunky’ as the Playgirl association will tend to do.
The Playgirls and myself realised that there were areas where we were not experts and so for fashion and self-portrait photography for instance, we brought in columnists and bloggers who knew their stuff. Issue 01 came out on the 10th of March across the UK and our interactive playgirlworld.com website will be live for readers to choose content for upcoming issues and to continue the playgirl experience online. We are also delighted that our columnists have their own blogs and websites where our readers can go for Playgirl-approved fashion tips and advice.
We are currently getting ready for our Playgirl launch on the 5th of April and looking forward to seeing ladies flicking through hunks, pondering the thought bubbles ‘hot or not?’, finding out a little bit more about their own and their mates’ aesthetic tastes, whilst subtly reminding them that anything is possible; because even the hunkiest of stars once sold gutters for a living.
Playgirl launches on the 5th of April 2011 in a secret venue in Central London.
