Playboy Energy, Baby...

Playboy has tested its own branded energy drink on college students in Boston, and it's now rolling out the products in other major markets nationwide.

Yeah, baby.  Playboy energy.  You know what that’s for.

Only you're wrong.  "...No one has done a drink in a way that is really high-end and luxury," explained the guru behind the product introduction.  "The drink takes from the DNA of Playboy which, as a brand, embodies Hugh Hefner’s luxury lifestyle..."

So the bunny logo on a can of metallic-tasting swill connotes luxury, and will 1) attract consumers over the other two-dozen similar products on-shelf, and 2) command a price premium because of its associated values of brand.

Yeah, baby. 

All of the branding buzz-word nonsense of the guru's quotes aside, this strikes me as a woefully misplaced licensing deal.  And a missed opportunity.

The textbook definition of "a playboy" is someone who is well-off, and spends his time entertaining himself with dissolute activities.  The Playboy brand capitalized this definition, and provided the creative content and dark nightclub rooms to experience it during a stretch of years mid last-Century.

Today, it does neither.  Though having successfully extended its content business to cable and Internet porn, the slimmed-down ad pages in issues of its magazine attest to a definition, and experience, that are far less meaningful to the fantasies of today's hedonist consumers.  Realizing the bunny icon as rapper bling does not relevance make.

I'd argue that the Playboy was never a static idea or image, but rather a label for behaviors...a lifestyle, even, however infrequently or incompletely realized by its middle class consumers.  Self-styled playboys did Playboy things, like oogle at ersatz bimbos, contemplate expensive tech toys and, occasionally, swagger.

It has about as much to do with luxury as Donald Trump.  Playboy is a synonym for doer of slightly dangerous things with no risk of punishment.

Why doesn't the business busy itself with providing ways to make that definition a reality again for its brand?  The implications for its content, as well as licensing into products and services, could be immense.

On the energy drink front, I'd have gone to town with marketing that was very retro funny, and that played off of the Playboy history.  The line could have been "fuel for your next Playboy moment" over imagery of a smiling Every Guy standing outside a hotel room with a buxom lady.  For that matter, it could be outright sold as an over-the-country remedy for erectile dysfunction.

Give me Playboy energy, baby.