Myriam Karsch, founder and managing partner at Kouneli Media, talks with us about digital transformation, what makes the Playboy unique and how a small team succeeded in continuing a big media brand.
What is Kouneli Media? #
Myriam Karsch: Kouneli is a young media company that was founded in 2019. When we took over the Playboy license from Hubert Burda Media, we went independent. I’d say we have an established, internationally known brand but we work as an “agile startup”.
You describe the Playboy as a “360° media brand”. What does that mean? #
Myriam Karsch: Our content is multi-media, and we also have a broad selection of publishing platforms. For example, when we produce a nude shooting, we don’t just create high-quality photographs but also video, audio, interview in different formats and making-of-material which will then be used on different platforms.
Aside from TV, we’re basically everywhere: in print, on our website, YouTube, social media and newsletter. We have also produced podcast episodes. And then we have our events such as the Gentlemen’s Weekend (a reading series) or the Playmate of the Year award.
What format or channel is the most challenging for you to establish? #
Myriam Karsch: To be honest, we didn’t get far with our podcast. We tested an interview format called “After Hours” with our Editor in Chief Florian Boitin which was pretty complex. We produced two full seasons. The first one was behind a paywall in cooperation with Podimo. The second one was ad-financed and published over different channels. The feedback was good and we got a lot of valuable data. But we lacked a clear plan for monetization which is why we went back to focus on our core business.
What do you think was the reason for the podcast not quite reaching its goals? #
Myriam Karsch: Maybe the format wasn’t exactly what the audience expects from Playboy. We didn’t interview our cover stars but people we deemed interesting in relation to the Playboy. I am still wondering if a different direction would have more potential – for example conversations about sexuality or nudity, to connect the podcast closer to our core topics.
And then we have TV. It’s nearly impossible to put Playboy on TV. It’s actually a bit similar with social media because the big US-platforms do not really tolerate nudity and delete content.
How do you view social media when it comes to your brand strategy? #
(Info: a few weeks before the interview, the Facebook page of German Playboy was suddenly deleted without any warning. Only after Kouneli involved their lawyers were involved, did the page get reinstated)
Myriam Karsch: When our Facebook account was deleted without context, we approached the issue from to angles: first, we looked at the immediate impact on our business and second, we took a stance towards Meta.
When a monopolist such as Meta deletes a journalistic page without any explanation, it’s not just a technical process.
It undermines the freedom of press and shows that journalistic decisions are being left to automated systems. It’s a dangerous precedent in which a private platform acts as a censor. And this is a serious issue, even if the direct impact on our business was manageable.
I am convinced that we could exist without social media. But these channels are still valuable marketing tools – especially, when we work with celebrities that have a big audience.
We collaborated with the German rapper Luciano three years ago. For a partner collection, we put him on the back cover of our 12/2022 edition. It was a huge success: the post with his cover had some of the biggest reach in the history of the German Playboy. It reached new target audiences. On that account, especially regarding younger audiences, social media is still essential.
Did the success of your events surprise you or was it expected? #
Myriam Karsch: It has become significantly more difficult to get a piece of advertisers’ budgets. We were really strategic when planning our events because we saw the potential for growth.
Even though our marketing revenue does not mainly come from events, they make it possible to connect marketing budgets and create a connection back to the magazine, for example, via follow-up reporting or alternative partner involvement.
The “Playmate of the Year” award is still a very popular format. However, the contribution margin of event formats is significantly lower, as the effort involved is considerably higher than with a classic 1/1 booking.
How did you get to your current (digital) subscription model? #
Myriam Karsch: Our ad revenue was steadily decreasing, so we had to monetize our digital offers more via our users. This requires more data transparency and reliable, clean processes.
And that’s the reason why we switched to Frisbii Media – the platform is perfect for digital subscriptions and covers all our requirements.
In the next step, we developed a structured transition from the freely accessible, ad-supported website to a tiered paid model. Now, we have different levels: a freemium offer, the Plus+ subscription and All Access.
All Access is basically our former Premium offer but also includes the e-paper-archive and additional content on playboy.de. That way, we have a tiered, logical system that covers the path from freely accessible content to full access.
What are the advantages of your approach? #
Myriam Karsch: Because they have to register for the freemium content, many of our users are no longer anonymous. We are able to target our messaging better, offer upgrades and make them aware of our many offers.
And the numbers are impressive: 67% of our new subscriptions are All Access. Initially, we thought that it would be much more even between Plus+ and All Access.
How did you approach the magazine when you got the license? #
Myriam Karsch: Our first impulse was to do everything from scratch and do it the way we always wanted to. But you can’t do that without the users or customers – big changes are often not really met with enthusiasm. We were therefore very conscious about stability: we kept the same printing company, the same marketer, the same distributor.
We also kept many of the existing colleagues and hired people we already had worked with. We wanted to create a combination of experience and fresh perspectives.
Step by step, we then worked our way towards bigger topics, for example, the website. For the first 7 months, we continued to use the Burda-website for a license fee. In the middle of 2020, we started our own playboy.de website. And we need to do that step by step as well, since the former paid section for Playboy Premium was completely separated from the main website on a technical level.
All in all, it took us about a year until all structures were newly developed.
Did you also have moments where you wanted to give up? #
Myriam Karsch: The first time happened already in autumn 2019, even before we started. We had already announced publicly that we wanted to take over the license when the bank credit was yanked.
Until then, we were convinced to be able to finance Kouneli completely externally. We had an established business model, reliable numbers and a strong brand. The usual risks for a startup did not really apply to us since we could already guarantee a basic stream of sales and ad-revenue. Looking back, it was probably naive to think that we could do everything with borrowed capital. But especially in my responsibility as managing partner, I doubted whether we could pull it off.
So, we sat down again and crunched the numbers to see if we could manage with our money as shareholder loans. And it actually worked. I think our big advantage was that we had revenue from day one and didn’t have to start from scratch.
Another challenge was Corona. For us, it wasn’t necessarily worse than for other companies but when you’re responsible for 14, then 18 employees, you do ask yourself how long you can go without any savings when ad revenue crashes by March 2020 and everyone works from home. But we made it through that as well. We did a lot of things right.
What would you say is the secret to your success? #
Myriam Karsch: A big source of our success is our clear and short decision-making. Florian Boitin and I work closely together and with Yannic Riegger we have someone who is incredibly strong for our digital areas. We don’t need long decision cycles to manage our digital projects.
Right now, decisions are made by us which makes us fast and agile. We can start projects immediately.
The second source is our motivation. We love our product and know exactly what makes it better. For example, if the implementation of the paywall shows that we require a new website, we can just do it. We do not stand in our own way just because we initially planned something else two years ago. At the end of the day, it’s the better product that counts.
And that’s what differentiates us from bigger companies that are more budget- and goal-oriented and less flexible. We want the best possible product and don’t always strictly adhere to our budget plans.
Why do you think is Playboy Germany still so strong when it comes to print sales? #
Myriam Karsch: Playboy is unique. Nudity can be found everywhere online but, in our case, we don’t just sell anonymous, random nudity. We focus on very specific women which makes it quite unique.
But even we saw a decrease in print, especially in retail. It’s probably because of our very conscious price increase which we implemented for a stable long-term development two years ago. Since then, we’re pretty stable.
And we have reason to celebrate: the industry magazine Der Neue Vertrieb (DNV) published a study that followed the development of sales revenue of Germany’s highest-circulation consumer magazines. From 2019 until 2024, they analyzed the sales revenue of 170 print magazines. The German Playboy managed to increase its sales revenue from subscription and shop sales by 35% in the last 5 years which places it at number 1 of the tip 100 consumer magazines in Germany.
Our cover stars are very important. With celebrities like Désirée Nick or Cathy Hummels, we had sales peaks of 60 – 70% above average which helps balance out the slight decrease in print sales.
How do you balance print and digital prices and how did you approach the price increase? #
Myriam Karsch: We had a few pricing points. One was the print magazine at 8,90€ and the other was the Playboy Premium Digital Abo at 14,90€ per month. Premium was slightly more expensive because it also included photo galleries and the archive, etc.
We also knew that you had to increase the price for a print magazine step by step, maybe a euro here or 50 cent there.
The Playboy Premium price was increased in 2017 by a high percentage of 50%. But we didn’t lose a single user back then which showed us that our customers really wanted the subscription. The cost did not matter as much.
In the last years, we deliberately redefined sales at Playboy. Early 2023, we increased the copy price by 34% to 11,90€ – a step that wasn’t made based on tradition but because we did a thorough bottom-up-calculation.
We developed our pricing strategy like you would to introduce a new premium product with unique selling points. We did not go with any historical price guidelines.
So, you analyze all factors and then you have your price. At first, I thought about 12€ instead of 11,90€ and had already informed sales. But I got cold feet and settled on 11,90€ (laughs). Everyone told me to stay under 12€ due to pricing psychology. And I didn’t want to take the risk. To increase the price bravely by 34% and then hesitate because of 10 cent …
Once the print price is set, you can increase e-paper and subscription prices. And then you have to consider the fixed book prices (Buchpreisbindung) because the allowed discounts for subscriptions are limited. That way, your pricing comes together bit by bit.
We also look at the market when we define pricing: which pricing spans exist, how do others communicate their increases and how does the price make the most sense for the user? For our digital subscription, we don’t show the monthly subscription price but the weekly price.
All in all, pricing is an incredibly sensitive topic. It’s based on experience, established standards and a bit of assessments. You can’t just double prices if the value of your service hasn’t changed remarkably.
(Laughs) We’ve talked about pricing quite a bit …
It is an incredibly exciting topic, especially since there is no clear set of rules.
Myriam Karsch: At the end of the day, pricing is about the value that a customer gets from a product. And we have a distinct advantage: you can’t replace us. No one needs the Playboy – but many want it. And if you want something, you’re willing to pay for it.
Read, how Kouneli developed their digital strategy supported by Frisbii in our customer success story.
