Playboy’s famous bunny logo is being spread across the internet.  

Already thousands of Playboy NFTs with bunny avatars have been dropped by the company. They also launched Centerfold, a social media platform that allows for digital interactions. The company plans to create a Playboy Mansion in another metaverse.

These plans for the future are taking place while an A&E documentary focuses on the company’s unflattering past. “Secrets of Playboy” a series of 10 parts that features ex-workers, former playmates, and current girlfriends of Hugh Hefner the founder of Playboy, has made headlines. The show, which focuses on Playboy’s dark past, reveals Playboy could have had an evil side.

Playboy’s leadership sent an open letter to their website before the series premiered in February. They stated, “Today’s Playboy, not Hugh Hefner’s Playboy”

Playboy’s leaders are trying to bring Playboy into the 21st century, nearly five years after Hefner’s suicide and almost two years since its last legacy print magazine was shut down. This is the challenge of staging Playboy’s digital reinvention to the next stage in internet innovation that technologists refer to as web3.

The magazine was only one of the company’s products. It was the rabbit head, which is worth billions or billions of dollars. This wasn’t replicable, Playboy CEO Ben Kohn said to CNBC during a recent interview. 

Although the brand generates billions worldwide in consumer spending, most of this is done through licensing products that are sold abroad. Kohn indicated that this business model is flawed, and that Kohn is working to change it.

One of the CEO’s solutions is based heavily on a less-secret weapon: The company’s famous bow-tie-wearing bunny.

“When you consider what this brand means, from marketing perspectives, from awareness perspectives, there’s pretty much 100% awareness all over the world,” he stated.

Kohn has compared Playboy’s brand awareness with Nike AppleCompanies with instantly recognisable logos around the world are a good example.

This CEO is creative in leveraging the “inherent worth” of digital technology. Playboy SEC filed from last year shows that the company spent $12 million on a Bombardier Global Express BD-700 to allow Kohn to unleash the billion-dollar bunny logo not only across the sky but the entire internet. 

It is a tribute to Hugh Hefner’s DC-9 in black, also known as Big Bunny. Hugh Hefner flew the plane in the 70’s. The Global Express, which started off white, was gut renovatedBefore resurfacing five months later, with an all-black body with bunny logos emblazoned on it and the same tail number as its predecessor. This was before Hefner and celebrities surrounded by Playboy bunnies from around the globe.

This ride is not like Hefner’s plane. There aren’t any Playboy bunnies in sexy clothes or even a waterbed. The luxe new jet does include a pop-up bar and digital disco balls,Kohn’s vision will only come to focus if you can see past the distractions. CNBC spoke to him that it was not about travel but the strong tail-wind the jet creates for ecommerce, marketing, and social influence.

“This allows us to interact with celebrity influencers globally, and in a collaborative manner,” he stated.

Cardi B flew from New York City to Miami on the aircraft’s earliest flight in December. The announcement that she was Playboy’s creative director in residencies and the launch by Playboy of a travel-themed collection of accessories and apparel inspired by Big Bunny’s new jet, coincided with her take-off.

A $950 cashmere blanket featuring the jet’s tail number N95OPB is printed on it. There’s also a $350, leather safari jacket which matches the unique leather-upholstered walls of the jet’s lavatory. All items are exclusively available online. Kohn sees the plane as a billboard and a retail outlet, while it also acts as a social media megaphone.

Cardi B posted two Instagram photos on her flight from New York City to Miami that received almost 9,000,000 views. Playboy is counting on Cardi B’s influence with her nearly 123 million Instagram users to bring attention to the brand and to Centerfold, its new venture. The company describes it as a new digital platform “for creative freedom, artistic expression, & sex positivity.”

Playboy receives a portion of the revenues from subscriptions to creators content. Users pay fees for this. This puts Playboy in direct competition to OnlyFans which is an online subscription service that features many creators of explicit content.    

Kohn and Pamela Anderson, actress and model, reunited with the brand on October. Anderson has been featured on thirteen Playboy covers since 1989. Playboy’s latest NFT drop was her role.

Rabbitars are a collection of bunny avatars created by the company. OpenSea sells 11953 unique digital artworks that depict cartoon-like bunnies. According to the company, Rabbitar NFTs can unlock special offers, giveaways, and other metaverse experiences. The digital bunny drops will be followed this spring by the Rabbitar-themed merch drops. And that’s only the beginning. The NFTs have been made from archive photos that David Bowie took in 1976. They include a Playboy bunny riding waterskis on 1970, and a Playboy cover dating from April 1973.

Kohnsaid: “We have 10,000,000 pieces of content in the archive, which we can also drop when NFT’s are moving forward.”

Additionally, the CEO plans to bring back Playboy Mansion in digital format.

Kohn stated, “I see it returning first in the metaverse since I believe we can reach an international audience through that it’ll be part of our member plan.” And then, I can also see a place down the road that we have physical mansions.

Playboy may have hosted parties in Decentraland (one of the most popular virtual worlds), but he has not yet chosen a location for his metaverse home.

“As we move into 2022, we’ll begin with Playboy membership and members will have a whole host of benefits moving forward and a lot of our membership will be based on blockchain,”  Kohn said.

Kohn looks to the future but the public release of “Secrets of Playboy”, a 10-hour-long documentary, last month makes it clear that the company must acknowledge the past. Playboy leadership responded to those who wrote open letters to support the company’s past experiences by writing an open letter, even before the series premiered.

It stated, “As a brand that values sex positivity, we believe safety security and accountability to be paramount. Anything less is unacceptable.”

CNBC’s Kohn says that Playboy is now a company with 80% female employees, thanks to his leadership.

Kohn stated that he believes this is an excellent sign of where the company will be moving in the future.

As a sign that Playboy is entering a new chapter, he also points out a drastic shift in the consumer demographics.

According to our average audience age, 75% are younger than 34. He said that today, more than 50% of our sales go to women. This is quite a different company from four years ago.