Christie Hefner on the Difference Between Playboy and Porn | Big Think

Christie Hefner on the Difference Between Playboy and Porn

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Christie Hefner is careful to preserve the integrity and cachet of an upscale lifestyle brand.

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Christie Hefner:

Christie Hefner, daughter of Hugh Hefner, is the former chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises.

During her tenure, Hefner restructured operations and initiated the Company's highly successful electronic and international expansion. The Company launched its branded channel in 1982, making Playboy the first magazine brand to be successfully leveraged into television. In 1994 led the Company onto the Internet when Playboy became the first national magazine on the World Wide Web.

Hefner is active in a number of local and national organizations. She was the first woman elected to the Chicago chapter of the Young Presidents' Organization. Hefner helped found the Committee of 200, an international organization of preeminent women business owners and executives. She serves on the boards of Rush University Medical Center, Canyon Ranch Health Resort, and on the board of governors of the Paley Center for Media. Hefner is also on the Advisory Boards of the American Civil Liberties Union and The Creative Coalition, and a member of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She also spent four years as project board chairman for the CORE Center, raising $30 million to build this innovative clinic and research facility, which opened in Chicago in the summer of 1998. The CORE Center conducts clinical research and provides prevention education and outpatient care for people with HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hefner: Well, I think at its essence what pornography is it satisfy the desire that people have for sexually explicit content that, you know, is a very strong human desire, and people who do it well understand it and know how to do it. I think what Playboy aspired to from the beginning was to represent the good life and part of that was the attraction between men and women and the romantic part of life, and that is also a very strong human desire and one that is shared by women and men and one that’s shared around the world. So, we see our role as something quite different and that influences the standards with which we approach the content and the breadth of the content that we can deliver appropriately under the Playboy brand. And in turn has allowed us to create a real consumer products brand. So, I think the lesson is to actually understand what you believe your brand mission is and then to be true to that in terms of how the consumers see it, and that’s a combination of your own standards and some regular, I think, research into whether the consumers are perceiving your brand the way you want them to, which we do, I don't know, let’s say every 10 years, we did it just in this last year with the company called Red Scout. And that gives you that very important, sort of gut check from the outside in.