For years, men who actually want to read Playboy Magazine at work have been haunted by the naked women who are plastered all over the pages of the print edition as well as the publication’s Web site, but no more.
Playboy launched a work-safe Web site yesterday, The Smoking Jacket, giving men who claim to only read it for the articles a chance to prove their claims.
“The smoking jacket isn’t just something I like to wear around the mansion,” says Hugh Hefner in the web site’s welcome video. “Next to the mansion, it’s the best hangout on the planet.”
The Web site will not include the longer articles and interviews, because Playboy.com doesn’t want to lose too many hits to its sister web site, but the site’s inception was the product of lots of market research.
“A lot of our audience logs on (to Playboy.com) after work, and we saw that we were missing a golden opportunity to reach guys when they’re online the most: when they’re sitting at their desk, not working, sending e-mails to their friends,” said Jimmy Jellinek, Playboy’s editorial director in a recent Chron.com article. “Basically, [it’s] a juke box of cool.”
Playboy.com is just the kind of Web site that has companies around the nation setting up Firewalls and monitoring their workers’ browsing history, but sometimes men want to visit a web site that’s simply laid back, and this will give them the opportunity to do so without having to minimize windows any time a coworker walks by.
But is it just a novelty? Only time will tell, but since it’s connected to Playboy (and has the same marketing team), the site will most likely boom and attract many, many readers who are looking for a way to spice up their otherwise dull workday, if only by word of mouth and infamy for its connection to Hef.
“It’s all about social currency,” Jellinek said. “You want to be the first guy of your friends to send the funny joke, the crazy video … You can be the coolest guy among your friends if you’re the first person to circulate this information among them.”
While College Humor, The Oatmeal and a bevy of other Web sites also offer PG-13 content for adults to kill time with, Playboy has at its disposal more competent and accomplished writers, editors, cartoonists, marketers and, of course, beautiful women in the sidebar.
The Web site will be safe for most workplaces, but scantily clad women are still plastered on it, and it just might be risqué enough to be blocked, but again, only time will tell.
In the meantime boys, this one’s worth bookmarking. For all you know, it could disappear in the near future, but with Hugh Hefner (who is a genius, for those of you who don’t know) behind the wheel, The Smoking Jacket will probably attract young, male readers for years to come.
And for those of you who still live with your parents, it’s probably not blocked yet, so check it out.
