Kelly launches the Playboy Energy Drink in London on November 18th last year.
Agent Triple P was wandering through the City on Friday and saw a bus carrying an advertisement for Playboy Energy Drink. We had never heard of such a thing but, apparently, it is available in twenty countries and was launched in the UK two months ago (using Kelly Brook, naturally).
The lovely Kelly has also posed tastefully on a motorcycle (a Harley-Davidson soft tail if we are not mistaken - our particular friend S in Vancouver has one) to advertise this product. Kelly also features on the UK drink's website which features some particularly disgusting sounding cocktail recipes.
Agent Triple P does not understand the purpose of energy drinks. Why would anyone want to pay a premium price for a sugary drink full of sugar and stimulants? Why not just have a coffee with sugar in it? Why does anyone need a drink at all? If you need a glucose boost have a chocolate bar. It will still bring you crashing down shortly afterwards as your body floods your system with insulin.
Apparently, the Playboy concoction (which has all sorts of nonsensical ingredients like Ginseng Root, Guarana extract and Damiana leaf in it, to justify the high price) tastes like...well a sugary, orange fizzy drink.
Sorry Kelly, you can't look sophisticated if you're holding a can
"This product provides consumers with a taste of the exhilaration that has long been associated with the Playboy lifestyle".
Or so says Sarah Haney, senior vice president, global licensing, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. I'm sorry but sophisticated drinkers do not drink any sort of carbonated drinks other than water, full stop. Sugary, carbonated drinks are for children.
Imagine how much one this size would cost. That's the drink, by the way.
On top of this it's priced at £1.20 for 250ml. So, about the same as a cheap bottle of wine. San Pellegrino, Agent Triple P's favourite carbonated water, is only 33p per 250ml and that's an expensive mineral water.
Now while we are pleased to see Kelly continuing to pick up cheques from Playboy this really sums up what someone once called the worst managed top brand in history. You have an iconic logo, global recognition of your name and yet you continue to plough investment into down market tat. The inference, presumably, is that if you drink the drink it will enable you to perform like Mr Hefner and bag a Kelly (not that we are saying he has but she has certainly impressed someone at Playboy). But surely even the sort of stupid young people who, presumably, drink these drinks don't think that. Do they?
The key with building a premium brand is to only associate it with premium products not just stick your label on anything that anyone offers you. What next? Playboy pizza, Playboy tortilla chips? Utter nonsense! The sad fact of the matter is that, considering it used to be a magazine that did have an up market position and a defined view of what was sophisticated (albeit fifty years ago), we suspect that no-one at Playboy would recognise "sophisticated" if it jumped out of a cake at them