A Change of Course

Abstract

While Playboy Enterprises was plagued with financial, political, and social challenges throughout the 1980s, Hugh Hefner, as the brand champion, was always targeted at the heart of the controversies around the brand. A new conservative movement marked the political, religious, and social views of the decade, and Hugh Hefner and the Playboy brand’s public links to sexual liberation and drugs were the topic of choice for many Americans. The cloud hanging over the Playboy brand would get darker before it would clear.

I’m not as driven as I used to be. Part of that was the ability to pass off some of the business end to my daughter and focus on the part of the Playboy company that I really cared about, which is the magazine and the creative end of it.

Hugh Hefner, 80 by Gerald Gardner and Jim Bellows