订阅The fascinating economics behind Playboy’s decision to drop nudes from its magazine
花花公子杂志做出取消裸照的决定背后迷人的经济学
作者：Timothy B. Lee @ 2015-10-13
译者：混乱阈值（@混乱阈值）
校对：小册子（@昵称被抢的小册子）
来源：Vox，http://www.vox.com/2015/10/13/9523879/playboy-nudity-no
On Monday, the New York Times reported on a development that sounds like an April Fool’s joke: Playboy magazine is going to stop publishing images of naked women.
周一，《纽约时报》报道了一条听起来像愚人节笑话的新闻：《花花公子》杂志将不再刊登裸女照片了。
But Playboy CEO Scott Flanders is serious. He believes the Playboy brand can transcend its salacious origins and become a lucrative vehicle for selling mainstream products. There’s already a wide variety of Playboy-branded clothing and jewelry out there, and the Playboy brand is particularly popular in China, where pornography is officially illegal.
然而花花公子的CEO Scott Flanders是认真的。他相信花花公子品牌能够超越自己的色情业出身，通过销售主流产品而获利。花花公子品牌的服装和珠宝早就款式繁多了。而且花花公子品牌在中国特别受欢迎，尽管色情业在中国是非法的。
Playboy tested this strategy out with the Playboy.com website, which has been free of explicit nudity since last year. The company says it’s been a big success, attracting a much bigger and younger audience. Now it’s hoping to expand on that success with what used to be the country’s most popular pornographic magazine.
花花公子已经开始在它的网站Playboy.com上试行这一新策略，该网站从去年开始就已经没有露骨的裸体照片了。公司声称此举已经获得了巨大成功，吸引到了比以前多得多且年轻得多的用户。现在公司正希望将成功扩展到这份一度是全国最具人气的色情杂志上。
Playboy is dropping explicit nudity from its flagship magazine
花花公子正把露骨的裸体从它的旗舰杂志中去除
Starting in March 2016, there won’t be any explicit nude images of women in the US edition of Playboy magazine.
从2016年3月开始，美国版《花花公子》杂志将不会再有任何露骨裸照了。
In 1953, Playboy made its mark by being one of the first mainstream magazines to feature pictures of nude women. In the pre-internet era, porn was a lot harder to obtain, so there was a big market for pornographic magazines. The magazine grew to more than 5 million subscribers by the 1970s and attracted a bunch of competitors.
在1953年，《花花公子》作为最早以裸女图为特色的主流杂志之一而名留史册。在前互联网时代，获得色情内容比现在要困难得多，因此色情杂志有很大的市场。到1970年代，《花花公子》已拥有超过五百万订户，并吸引了一堆竞争者。
But the internet has totally transformed the pornography industry. Today, any kind of porn you can imagine is just a Google search away, and in most cases is available for free. So over the past couple of decades, the value proposition of paying $19.95 a year to have a few dozen nude images delivered in dead-tree format each month has become less and less compelling. Today the magazine only has around 800,000 subscribers.
然而互联网彻底改变了色情业。如今，只需google搜索一下就能找到各种你能想到的色情内容，而且多数是免费的。因此，为了每月几十张纸质裸体图片而每年花19.95美元这种买卖，在过去几十年里越来越没吸引力了。现在《花花公子》只剩下大约80万订户了。
On the other hand, Playboy has always aspired to be more than just a pornographic magazine. Over the decades, those 5 million subscribers allowed Playboy to do interviews with a wide variety of famous people, including Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmy Carter, and Steve Jobs.
另一方面，一直以来《花花公子》所追求的都不仅仅是做一本色情杂志。过去数十年间，五百万的订户量让《花花公子》得以采访到众多名人，其中包括马丁·路德·金、吉米·卡特和史蒂夫·乔布斯。
There’s a long-running joke about people “reading Playboy for the articles,” but Playboy’s non-pornographic content really has been pretty good over the years. Now it won’t be such a joke anymore. Playboy will replace its explicit nude images with the kind of PG-13 images found in men’s magazines such as Maxim and Stuff, and will beef up its coverage of other topics, including a new sex column and expanded coverage of the liquor business.
“为了读文章而看《花花公子》”是个长盛不衰的老笑话，然而这么多年来《花花公子》的非色情内容确实非常不错。现在这笑话将不再是笑话了。《花花公子》将使用诸如《Maxim》和《Stuff》这样的男士杂志中的PG-13（13岁以下未成年人需在家长指导下阅读）级图片来替代露骨裸照，并将丰富其它话题的内容，这其中包括一个新的性爱专栏和增加对酒水生意的报道。
Cutting nudity from Playboy.com was a big success
将裸体从Playboy.com上移除获得了巨大成功
Playboy used to look like a conventional media company with a stable of magazines, websites, television stations, and so forth. But that business model hasn’t done well in the internet age, and it reached its nadir in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
花花公子曾经看起来像传统的媒体公司一样，拥有一批杂志、网站、电视台等。但这样的商业模式在互联网时代不太玩得转，并随着2008年的金融危机落到最低谷。
So the company began downplaying its media properties and focusing instead on promoting and licensing its iconic brand. And Flanders started to wonder whether distributing pictures of naked women was becoming a business liability. “You could argue that nudity is a distraction for us and actually shrinks our audience rather than expands it,” he argued last year.
因此公司开始把重心从媒体资产中转移，转而将注意力集中在推广其偶像品牌及品牌授权使用。Flanders开始怀疑发布裸女图片是否成了公司的商业负累。“可以说，裸体内容让公司分心，事实上还减少而非增大了我们的读者数量”，去年Flanders如是说。
Lots of people are attracted to the risqué vibe of the Playboy brand, but there are situations in which outright pornography isn’t allowed. Apple’s App Store, for example, doesn’t allow apps to have sexually explicit imagery, for example, nor do Facebook and Instagram.
很多人被花花公子品牌性感暧昧的气质吸引，但有些地方禁止直白的色情内容。例如苹果公司的应用商店不允许带有露骨性爱图像的应用上架，Facebook和Instagram也一样。
So last year, Playboy overhauled its primary website, Playboy.com, and took out all the explicit nudity (there are still plenty of racy near-nude shots of the type you’ll find in other men’s magazines). Playboy executives told the New York Times that this was a huge success: Traffic quadrupled, and the average age of readers fell from 47 to 30.
因此，花花公子去年对其主网站Playboy.com做了次大扫除，移除了所有露骨的裸体内容（网站上依然还有大量那种你会在别的男士杂志里看到的近乎裸体的火爆图片）。花花公子的管理层告诉《纽约时报》，此举获得了巨大成功：网站流量翻了四倍，读者的平均年龄从47岁下降至30岁。
In other words, young people who grew up in the porn-saturated world of the internet aren’t that interested in Playboy.com as a place to get porn. And the existence of naked women on the site made it awkward to read Playboy articles at work — where many people spend time goofing off online — or share Playboy content on social media sites. Dropping the naked women dramatically expanded the potential audience for Playboy.com without significantly reducing its appeal.
换句话说，在充斥着色情内容的互联网世界中成长起来的年轻人们对通过Playboy.com获得色情内容这件事不感兴趣。网站上的裸女使得在工作场所阅读网站的文章——很多人在工作的时候偷闲上网——或在社交媒体网站上分享花花公子网站的内容变得很尴尬 。去除裸女这招在不严重影响网站吸引力的同时大幅扩展了Playboy.com的潜在用户群。
Playboy is trying to become a mainstream consumer brand
花花公子正努力成为一个主流消费品牌
More traffic and a younger audience are big successes in their own right, but even more importantly, the shift helps make the Playboy brand more mainstream. There’s already a large demand for Playboy-branded merchandise, and Flanders is betting that that demand will grow even more if Playboy becomes less associated with explicit pornography in the minds of the public.
更大的网站流量和更年轻的用户，本身就是一个巨大的成功，而更重要的是，公司的转变使得花花公子品牌更加主流。花花公子品牌的商品本来就拥有很大的市场需求，而Flanders深信，如果在大众心目中花花公子与露骨色情联系不那么紧密的话，市场需求将获得更大增长。
The decision to drop nudity from the magazine is best seen in this light. The goal isn’t so much to make the magazine itself more successful — though presumably its owners would like to do that — but to make the magazine a more effective sales tool for the Playboy brand more generally.
最好从这样的角度来看待将裸体从杂志中去除的决定：该举措的主要目标并非为了让杂志本身更成功——尽管杂志的所有人想必希望如此——而是为了使杂志成为更有效的营销工具，在更广范围内推动花花公子品牌商品的销售。
Playboy’s magazine hasn’t been a big money maker in years. Flanders told the New York Times that the US edition of the magazine lost around $3 million last year. But Playboy’s efforts to cash in on its brand — and particularly its famous bunny logo — is paying big dividends.
花花公子的杂志已经有些年头没怎么赚钱了。Flanders告诉《纽约时报》，去年杂志的美国版亏损了大约3百万美元。但花花公子通过品牌——特别是公司著名的兔子商标——创收的努力目前正在带来巨额红利。
Playboy’s brand is not only widely known in the West, but it’s also surprisingly popular in China. Last year, Playboy-branded products generated $1.5 billion in revenues in China, about a third of the worldwide total. Playboy merchandise is available in 3,500 retail outlets in China — which is particularly remarkable because pornography is officially illegal there.
花花公子品牌不但在西方广为人知，在中国也出乎意料地受欢迎。去年，花花公子品牌产品在中国卖出了15亿美元，大约是其全球总收入的三分之一。花花公子的商品在全中国的3500个零售直营店有售——考虑到色情作品在中国并不合法，该业绩就特别值得称道。
Flanders hopes that making the magazine less porny and more mainstream will help make the Playboy-branded products more mainstream as well — and dramatically expand the market for them.
Flanders希望杂志不那么色情并且变得更加主流，能使得花花公子品牌的产品也变得更主流——并为产品大幅扩展市场。
Playboy-branded pornography isn’t going away
花花公子品牌的色情产品并未离开
There will no longer be naked ladies in Playboy magazine or at Playboy.com, but that doesn’t mean we’ll stop seeing explicit imagery distributed under the Playboy brand.
裸女将不再出现在《花花公子》杂志和Playboy.com网站上，但我们依然可以在花花公子的品牌之下，看到露骨图像。
In 2011, Playboy signed a deal with the internet porn company Manwin, since renamed MindGeek, to manage many of the company’s online properties and television channels. Playboy later regained control over the Playboy.com site, but the rest of Playboy’s pornographic empire, including the Playboy Plus subscription service and Playboy TV, continues to be operated by MindGeek.
2011年，花花公子与互联网色情公司Manwin签约，Manwin自此改名为MindGeek，并负责管理花花公子公司的网上资产和电视频道。后来花花公子又收回了Playboy.com网站的控制权，但花花公子色情帝国的其它资产包括Playboy Plus会员服务和Playboy TV将继续由MindGeek运营。
This might mean that Playboy can have the best of both worlds: It could enjoy the commercial benefits of a more mainstream image while continuing to profit indirectly from its pornography business.
这或许意味着花花公子将鱼与熊掌两者兼得：它将从一个更主流的形象获取商业收益，同时继续从其色情产业上间接获利。
On the other hand, if dropping pornography from its website pays big dividends for its licensing business, it’s possible that Playboy will seek to shut down its other pornographic properties as well. That might be tricky, since Playboy’s licensing agreement with MindGeek runs for 15 years (meaning Playboy might not get control back until 2026). But if Playboy becomes determined to separate itself fully from the pornography business, it might be able to cut a deal with MindGeek to end the deal early, or to choose a new brand name for its pornographic content.
另一方面，倘若将色情内容从网站去除能为其品牌授权业务带来巨大红利，那花花公子也可能关闭其它的色情产业。但这可能有些棘手，因为花花公子与MindGeek达成的授权协议有效期为15年（意味着花花公子在2026年之前可能无法取回控制权）。但假如花花公子决心剥离色情产业，他们或许可以和MindGeek商量提早终止协议，或者为其色情内容选择一个新品牌。
（编辑：辉格@whigzhou）
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