“She was smart, funny, and absolutely gorgeous,” says Caleb Urry, describing one of the Playboy playmates he’s met. “Drop-dead gorgeous. I mean, I was thinking that she was like Helen of Troy–I couldn’t believe that, like, some foreign country hadn’t claimed her and forced us to go to war over her.”
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It would seem the college market would do just fine left to itself–in fact, it’s hard to imagine more avid readers than 18-to-21-year-old guys–but apparently it’s been in need of a boost lately. In vice president of public relations Cindy Rakowitz’s words, “It’s a market that’s been proactively missed for a while.” She insists, “Sales are good–they’ve always been very good. We just think they can be better. We just want insurance that we’re not going to go down on college campuses. We used to be the only game in town, and now there’s a whole plethora of magazines–Details, say, or Spin, as well as a legion of smaller titles–devoted to the college market.”
The college-rep program is a case of proactive marketing taken to a stunning level of convolution. Playboy could probably quadruple its college sales just by sending a few playmates on tour. But it’s not enough merely to increase readership–Playboy Enterprises wants college kids to pick up its magazine for the right reasons.
The PC forums, as well as an “editorial discussion group” to be held at the Playboy mansion, are intended to fan this flame. But Urry has had a hard time drumming up interest in a panel around campus and even more trouble finding speakers. “I wanted to get students and professors, but they were reserved about the idea. And leftist, progressive-type organizations didn’t want to be part of a Playboy marketing scheme.”
Actually perversity is probably the least of Urry’s worries. His final bill includes some highly usual suspects: the de rigueur ACLU representative, a member of Feminists for Free Expression, the editors of Libido magazine, and an antipornography feminist lawyer.
