【外交政策 20160215】《花花公子》抛弃色情，投身中国

满仓

【中文标题】《花花公子》抛弃色情，投身中国
【原文标题】Playboy Is Ditching the Sex and Betting on China
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】Robert Foyle Hunwick
【原文链接】http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/15/playboy-is-ditching-the-sex-and-betting-on-china/


这个曾经火辣的品牌已经义无反顾地投身廉价品市场。休•海夫纳可以通过向中国大妈出售运动服来拯救他的公司吗？



当3月份的《花花公子》杂志在2月12日出现在书报亭中的时候，人们第一次发现杂志中没有了著名的裸体彩页。这个变化的主要原因是公司重新调整了专门针对中国的营销策略，色情和《花花公子》杂志在那里属于非法。《花花公子》全球特许权负责人马特•诺德比说：“我们希望能把生意扩展到中国的年轻人群中。”去年5月份，公司在中国签订了一个为期10年的合作协议，5个月之后，公司就决定抛弃生殖器官。

美国的大部分读者对此并不关心。毕竟在几年之前互联网就已经表达出《花花公子》对于成人内容的态度。“现在，你只需要点击鼠标就可以看到你所能想象到的所有色情内容。”杂志的母公司花花公子集团CEO斯科特•弗兰德斯在接受《纽约时报》采访时说。在这本杂志的首席编辑、狡猾的耄耋老人休•海夫纳看来，他一生的工作已经完成了。他已经让色情作品进入到他从未奢望过的主流状态——免费。

他的下一个目标似乎是让这个品牌赢得更多的尊重。但是，虽然说美国人最终还是会读到《花花公子》杂志的文章，可这本杂志在中国根本不存在。（最新改版的、只包含安全内容的网站Playboy.com在中国的确有。）花花公子集团从这个世界上人口最多的国家赚取的收入大约占其总收入的40％——在2014年，这个数字是5亿美元——渠道是授权其标志在各类产品上的使用，包括化妆品、香水、内衣、运动服、配饰、箱包等等。因此公司宣称，花花公子的兔头标志是在世界上与耐克的对勾比肩的、认可度最高的标志之一。据《华尔街日报》在2015年的一篇文章，市场调研公司Penn Schoen Berland发现花花公子的品牌在中国消费者中的认知比例高达97％。现已停刊的《远东经济观察》在2002年报道，在中国，兔头的品牌认知度高过卡蒂尔、路易威登和迪奥。

但是，尽管花花公子所宣称被他们超过的那些知名品牌占据了中国各大购物商城的显著位置，捕获了中国消费者的关注度，但兔头的标志极少出现在这种令人望而却步的环境中。花花公子的业务增长似乎并未受到奢侈品消费疲软、政府对腐败现象的打击和经济发展缓慢等因素的影响，这或许和它对自身的定位有关，而不是源于中国消费者对它的品牌忠诚度。

花花公子的首席市场官克里斯廷•帕特里克在2013年说，公司的战略是“少一点运动服，多一点Tom Ford（译者注：知名太阳镜奢侈品牌）”。但是，花花公子在中国深入人心的形象与此恰恰相反。大妈们骄傲地穿着他们的绒布运动服，标志性的兔耳朵点缀着孩子们的T恤衫。经过精心设计以回避挑逗性和非法的因素的一瓶花花公子香水，往往是被送给一个生活节俭的学生，而不会招致城市精英的青睐。一位上海市场编辑曾经告诉我，她“从未关注过这个品牌”。彼德•海斯勒在他的书《奇石》中讲述了一个故事。2002年他在海边的一个疗养院遇到了一个典型的花花公子消费者：一个便衣警察穿着“仿造的Izod衬衫和一双黑皮懒汉鞋，上面有一个大大的花花公子标志。他的皮肤黝黑。”我与花花公子的第一次遭遇是在十年之后，在东莞的一个肮脏不堪的企业俱乐部，这座城市以瓷砖和色情产业闻名。我循着一阵浓烈味道看到一双脏乎乎的白袜子，在桑拿房的熏蒸下味道愈加强烈，已经褪色的兔子头标志和它的主人一样性感。

自从三十年前进入中国市场之后，花花公子集团想方设法地消除品牌中的色情色彩。它强调自身的原创休闲生活方式，而不是爆乳。中国共产党长期以来在中国禁止色情作品，所以花花公子专注消费品的销售。它最先进入中国的不是走私的杂志和录像带——当然这些东西也在手眼通天的人手中流转——而是在1988年与香港预发投资有限公司的著名商人陈振东签订了一项授权协议。花花公子时尚品牌的授权在90年代初被分拆成多个类别，包括皮具和运动服，并被分别卖给大陆的众多生产厂家。

在整个90年代，花花公子在某种程度上成功地把这个名字与北京长期以来所谴责的西方“低俗”文化撇清关系。（1997年，一名学生在目前早已关门的专卖店中接受《芝加哥论坛报》的采访时说：“我想到的是一个道德败坏的男人。我的知识告诉我，花花公子不是个好东西。”）公司在尝试低调处理它的中文名称，“花和王子”，使用一些强调完美生活方式的宣传语，比如“懂得享受生活的成功男士装扮形象的完美选择”。

这种策略似乎颇为凑效。1996年，在中国攫取的7000万美元销售额占据了花花公子全球收入总额的四分之一。但是第二年的亚洲金融危机造成了重创。由于购买力迅速缩减，预发公司被迫大幅削减股价，让他们“精心策划”的品牌核心形象遭到破坏。

花花公子抓住了1999年农历兔年的机会，克莉斯蒂•海夫纳——海夫纳的女儿，在1988年继任她父亲的CEO职位——来到中国，与地方官员和经销商会面，再一次启动“精心策划”的品牌塑造任务。到2003年，花花公子声称已经拥有650个销售柜台和几家专卖店，同时晋升到高品牌认知度阶层。一位要求匿名的经销商说：“这主要是因为它虚假的外国品牌形象，得以进入特定的销售渠道。”中国的大型商场和超市比较喜欢外国品牌，因为他们可以提升档次，比本土品牌收取更高的租金，同时吸引顾客。但是“他们很难找到真正的顶级国际品牌，花花公子乘虚而入。”

针对众多美国海外品牌来说，这已经是被用滥了的一个技巧，尤其是那些缺少足够知名度的时尚品牌。带有“Camel”、“Jeep”、“Marlboro”和“花花公子”商标的商品在中国的商店中随处可见，它们价格适中，但笼罩在高档西方品味的光环中，尽管这些商品都是在中国设计和生产的。《21世纪经济报道》在2013年曾经报道，销售带有“外国色彩的”本地商品在中国欠发达地区已经是一个“蓬勃发展的”新行业。

至于说人们为什么会购买花花公子，而不是Jeep？渠道起了关键性的作用。据一位公司前业务员介绍，公司把市场形象作为重要的零售策略。客户之所以购买，是因为商品就在那里，而竞争对手则在费尽心机地仿造。2006年，花花公子起诉了三家公司侵犯其商标权，当然这仅仅是象征性的表态，而不是真正根除假货。米尔沃德布朗研究公司的客户主任德里克•董在去年5月接受《中国日报》的采访时说，有鉴于花花公子的早期成功，“很多小作坊开始生产假冒的T恤衫，都有兔头的标志，但价格非常便宜。”（2011年，一位网友在福建省的某个商业街上拍到了一个假冒的花花公子商店，使用的是反转的兔头标志。）

但是，尽管花花公子的高端地位或许已经在走下坡路，但它的利润在持续攀升。KeySplash营销公司的CEO苏珊•古内留斯说：“如果不是采取了正确的市场战略，这家公司或许在多年前就已经无法生存了。”她在2009年写了一本书《像花花公子那样打造一个品牌》。“在过去20年里，中国是花花公子的正确举措之一，但我们不知道这是有意为之还是无心插柳。”

但是，在中国重回高端市场的努力遭遇到各种挫折。海夫纳在2004年高调宣布“兔子重回中国”，并开办了一家花花公子俱乐部。它与上海一家公司合作，修建了一个多层楼的娱乐中心，目标客户群是“30多岁和40多岁的成功、富有中国人”。其中有三个餐厅、一个迪斯科舞厅、酒吧和一个雪茄吧，这也是一个授权项目。花花公子预测第一年就会有数百万美元的的收入。

在这个一度被称为“东方妓女”的城市（译者注：对老上海的俗称）遭到排挤之后，花花公子直到2010年才又采取了更大的举措，位于澳门的豪华花花公子俱乐部，为富有消费者在这个中国的赌博飞地提供了一览天际线的VIP体验。花花公子的黄金年代再一次遭遇到挫折，这一次是位于伦敦花园大街的花花公子俱乐部赌场。这个赌场开办于1966年，当时几乎榨干了阿拉伯大亨们的石油钱包，它所获取的盈利抵消了花花公子所有其它产业的损失，达到每年8000万美元。海夫纳的伦敦俱乐部持续繁荣了15年，之后他失去了赌博业经营资质。花花公子的澳门俱乐部在惨淡经营了三年之后，黯然退出市场。

花花公子现任CEO弗兰德斯在监管了澳门的投资计划之后一年，接管了俱乐部的运营，但是他进入公司的时机恰逢业务低谷。弗兰德斯在5年之后的2014年接受《企业家》杂志采访时说：“我们依然认为自己……是一个强大的全球媒体公司，但是我们的业务，每一项业务，都比竞争对手要差。”花花公子集团目前已经确定了一个可行的战略，即一个出售杂志的品牌经营公司。2014年，花花公子在一项针对150个品牌授权商的调查中排名第58位。去年5月，公司与汉东联合签订了一项为期10年的授权协议，宣称“与一个提升品牌形象的长线合作方强化了授权投资组合”。与预发类似，汉东在与花花公子合作之前默默无闻（这家公司在2015年刚刚成立），所以它的合作价值——尤其是古内留斯所提到的花花公子的“核心市场”年轻消费群体——依然有待观察。

显而易见，重现往日花花公子俱乐部的辉煌希望渺茫，中国当前的道德和政策环境比它在2004年那次鲁莽的尝试时更加严峻。而且，年轻、敏感的城市时尚品消费群体——未来中高端商品的消费者——越来越对花花公子这种“恶俗”的品牌失去兴趣，他们更喜欢那些国内外独立的、品味独特的品牌和俱乐部。今天，花花公子所瞄准的中国消费者依然可以造访花花公子俱乐部，它就位于上海市区古弛精品店北面。被评论界认为是一个配备“不入流的电子乐器”的“廉价”的娱乐场所，所带来的独特中国体验完全与海外原创搭不上边——但品牌却深入人心。




原文：

When the March-April edition of Playboy hit newsstands on Feb. 12, it was the first without the nude centerfolds that made it famous — a move widely attributed to the company’s renewed focus on China, where pornography, and Playboy magazine, is strictly illegal. “We want to expand to a younger demographic in China,” Playboy’s global licensing head, Matt Nordby, explained when the company signed a 10-year partnership there last May; the decision to jettison the genitalia came just five months later.

Not that many of its American readers care much. The Internet, after all, rendered Playboy’s adult content tame and irrelevant years ago: “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable,” Scott Flanders, the CEO of the magazine’s parent company, Playboy Enterprises, told the New York Times. And as far as its vulpine, octogenarian editor in chief, Hugh Hefner, was concerned, his life’s work was done. Hef had helped make pornography more mainstream than he could possibly have hoped — he’d made it free.

His next goal seems to be making the brand respectable. But while Americans may finally be reading Playboy for the articles, the magazine isn’t even available in China (though its newly safe-for-work site, Playboy.com, is). Instead, Playboy Enterprises makes roughly 40 percent of its revenue — more than $500 million in 2014 — from the world’s most populous nation by licensing its logo for use on products: cosmetics, fragrances, lingerie, sportswear, fashion accessories, luggage, and so on. As a result, the company claims, its Playboy Bunny is among the most recognized symbols in the world, along with Nike’s swoosh. The market research firm Penn Schoen Berland found that Playboy has 97 percent name recognition with Chinese customers, according to a 2015 Wall Street Journal story. And the bunny ranked higher in brand recognition in China than Cartier, Louis Vuitton, and Christian Dior, according a 2002 story in the now defunct magazine Far Eastern Economic Review.

But while the fashion houses Playboy claims to outmatch in recognition front major malls in China, their giant marquees looming over shoppers, the bunny is rarely seen in such august surroundings. That Playboy’s growth seems unaffected by the luxury slowdown, precipitated by a widespread government crackdown on corruption and a weakening economy, probably speaks more to its own positioning than to any particular durability or favor among Chinese buyers. (Playboy did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

In 2013, Playboy’s chief marketing officer, Kristin Patrick, described the strategy as “Less sweatsuit, more Tom Ford.” And yet, Playboy’s enduring image in China is just the opposite: Grandmothers proudly wear their velour tracksuits, and the iconic bunny ears often adorn children’s T-shirts. Meticulously neutered of any association with the racy or illicit, a bottle of Playboy perfume is more likely to be gifted by a thrifty student than favored by a city socialite; one Shanghai fashion editor told me she “never paid them any attention.” In his book Strange Stones, journalist Peter Hessler describes being stalked at a seaside nursing home in 2002 by a typical Playboy customer: a plainclothes cop wearing “fake Izod shirt and black leather loafers that featured the Playboy logo. He had bad skin.” My first encounter was around a decade later, at a squalid business club in Dongguan, a city known for its textile and prostitution industries, where I traced an overpowering odor to a pair of grubby white socks hardening in the sauna, the fading rabbit ears every bit as sexy as their owner.

Since entering the Chinese market nearly three decades ago, Playboy Enterprises has worked hard to remove any hint of salaciousness from the brand. It emphasizes its original underpinnings as an arbiter of leisure and lifestyle, without so much as a nipple slip. The ruling Chinese Communist Party had long banned pornography in China, so Playboy focused instead on selling consumer goods. It first came to the mainland not through smuggled magazines or videos — though these were certainly circulated among the well-connected — but a 1988 licensing agreement with Hong Kong’s Chaifa Group, chaired by the prominent businessman John Chan Chun Tung. Licenses for Playboy’s fashion brand were divided in the early 1990s into multiple sub-categories, like leather goods and sportswear, and sold to various mainland manufacturers.

Throughout the 1990s, Playboy battled, only partially successfully, against any association of its name with the kind of Western “vulgarity” Beijing has long condemned. (“I think of a man who has a deficit in morals,” a student at its sole Beijing store, long closed, told the Chicago Tribune in 1997. “From what I’ve read in books, Playboy is a bad thing.”) The company downplayed the literal translation of its name, “Flower Flower Prince,” promoting slogans that instead emphasized a rounded lifestyle, such as “The Playboy man is multifaceted, placing importance on affairs of the mind and of the heart.”

That strategy seemed to work: In 1996, sales of $70 million from China made up nearly a quarter of Playboy’s global income. But the following year’s Asian financial crisis took a toll: As demand slumped during the recession, Chaifa was forced to discount stock deeply, undermining the “sophisticate” image supposedly at the core of the brand.

Playboy took advantage of the Year of the Rabbit in 1999 to deploy Christie Hefner — Hef’s daughter, who succeeded her father as CEO in 1988 — to meet local Chinese officials and retailers, and shift the focus back to sophistication. By 2003, Playboy claimed roughly 650 retail outlets and several mainland stores, and was boasting of its superior name recognition. “This was mainly because of its faux status as a foreign brand, which helped it enter certain distribution channels,” explained a former sales agent who requested anonymity as he still works in the business. Large Chinese supermarkets and department stores favor foreign brands because they raise pricing levels, pay higher rents than domestic brands, and attract customers. But “because it’s usually incredibly difficult for them to attract real, A-list international brands,” the former agent said. Brands like “Playboy fill the gap.”

It’s a well-worn model for American brands overseas, especially those without much reputation for fashion. Products bearing logos like Camel, Jeep, Marlboro, and Playboy have long been common in Chinese department stores, where they are afforded Western prestige and sold at an overseas premium, despite being designed and produced domestically. Selling local goods with “foreign appearances,” a 2013 report in the Chinese newspaper 21st Century Business Herald concluded, was a “booming” industry in China’s less-developed cities.

As for why people would choose to buy Playboy over, say, Jeep? Distribution. According to the ex-agent, the company relies on market presence as the crucial factor in its retail strategy. Customers buy it because it’s there; rivals, meanwhile, churn out Playboy knock-offs. In 2006, Playboy sued three companies for copyright infringement — though this was more a symbolic flail at a Hydra than a significant blow. Due to Playboy’s early success, “Many small workshops began to manufacture the fake T-shirts, still with a bunny logo but at a much cheaper price,” Derek Dong, an account director at research firm Millward Brown, told the China Daily newspaper last May. (In 2011, one blogger documented an entire fake store, complete with an inverted Playboy logo, in an obscure resort town in Fujian.)

The combination of a nominally foreign brand selling Chinese-made clothing, alongside local firms whose inexpensive knock-offs barely differed in quality, would degrade Playboy’s status throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, from indecent to innocent to merely innocuous. Not that customers would notice: “Buyers are typically less educated and lower- to middle-level income people” in second- or third-tier cities, the former agent said, referring to China’s custom of ranking cities according to their economic status and development. “The better-educated crowd are well aware of Playboy being a ‘fake foreign’ brand and avoid it.”

And yet, while Playboy’s prestige may have been dwindling, its profits did not. “This is a company that probably would have gone under years ago if it weren’t for merchandising,” said Susan Gunelius, CEO of the marketing firm KeySplash Creative and author of the 2009 book Building Brand Value the Playboy Way. “China is one of the things that Playboy did right in the past 20 years, but whether that was by design or by accident is unknown.”

Attempts to class things up in China, though, usually backfired: Consider, for example, Hef’s grand 2004 declaration that “the bunny is back” in China, followed by a move to open Playboy Clubs there. He partnered with a Shanghai company to open a multistory entertainment complex aimed at the “successful wealthy Chinese customer in his 30s and 40s,” with three restaurants, a disco, a spa, wine bar, and cigar lounge — another licensing deal, with Playboy predicting profits of several million dollars in the first year alone.

After being snubbed in a city once commonly known as the Whore of the Orient, Playboy waited until 2010 for its next big China move, the lavish Playboy Club Macau, billed as a VIP experience overlooking the skyline of the Chinese-run gambling enclave. It would be another throwback to the golden years, this time to the Playboy Club and Casino in Park Lane, London, which opened in 1966, and soaked up so much oil money from Arab whales that the casino’s profits covered the operating losses of all Playboy’s other interests, and then some: up to $80 million a year. Hef’s London club lasted 15 years before losing its gaming license; Playboy Club Macau closed quietly after just three unremarkable years in business.

Playboy’s current CEO Flanders had overseen the Macau venture a year after taking the helm, but he’d arrived to a company about to go under. “We saw ourselves … as this powerful global media company,” Flanders told the magazine Entrepreneur in 2014, five years later. “But our businesses, each one of them, was weaker than the next.” Playboy Enterprises has now settled into what works, being a brand-management company that happens to sell magazines. In 2014, Playboy ranked 58th in a survey of the world’s top 150 licensors. And last May, the company signed a 10-year licensing agreement with the company Handong United, lauding the deal as “enhancing our licensing portfolio with long-term, brand-enhancing partners.” Like Chaifa, Handong appears to have little presence prior to the Playboy deal (it was only incorporated in March 2015), so its partnership value — particularly to what Gunelius described as Playboy’s “key” market, young consumers — remains to be seen.

Certainly, there’s little hope for introducing the swank Playboy Clubs; the moral and regulatory environment in China is even more severe than during the first bungled attempt in 2004. Besides, young fashion-conscious urbanites today — the middle- to high-end consumers of tomorrow — are growing far less interested in “loud” brands like Playboy, and are more inclined to favor discrete, boutique labels and clubs, both domestic and foreign. Today, would-be Chinese customers can only visit the Play Boy Club, which opened just north of a Gucci store in downtown Shanghai, shortly after the magazine renounced nudity. Described by a reviewer as possessing a “dark tackiness” with “pure 5th-tier club vibes,” the distinctly Chinese experience may be a knock-off of the overseas original — but it eerily captures the brand.

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