A major anniversary for a true magazine icon: this year marks the fiftieth year that PLAYBOY has been published in Germany.

PLAYBOY is the most famous men’s magazine brand in the world. Founded in 1953 in the United States, a German edition of the August 1972 issue of PLAYBOY was published for the first time exactly 50 years ago, initially by the Bauer publishing group. From 2003 onwards, PLAYBOY was published by Hubert Burda Media until Editor-in-Chief Florian Boitin, together with the then publishing director Myriam Karsch, took over the licence for the magazine with their newly founded Kouneli Media GmbH in December 2019.

BCN is still responsible for the marketing of PLAYBOY. This setup has meant that Kouneli Media has since been able to continuously expand the circulation of the men’s lifestyle magazine against the market trend. PLAYBOY Deutschland sells 121,430 copies per month (IVW 2021/IV), reaching over 870,000 monthly readers (ma 2022/I). This makes PLAYBOY the undisputed market leader in the men’s lifestyle magazine segment.

Founded in 1953, PLAYBOY became one of the most important places to come for opinionated, courageous and award-winning journalism, first in the US and then worldwide. From the very beginning, it has stood up for freedom, openness to the world and self-determination, and resolutely opposes all forms of intolerance, oppression and exclusion on its journalistic distribution channels.

The German edition of PLAYBOY continues to attract international attention thanks to its widely quoted interviews and cover shoots in particular. It also inspires the great social debates of our time with its articles and campaigns. For instance, outstanding personalities such as transgender model Giuliana Farfalla, Paralympics gold medallist Elena Krawzow and plus-size model and body-positivity activist Hayley Hasselhoff recently set an impressive example for courage, self-determination and female empowerment with their spectacular nudes in the German edition of PLAYBOY.

Half a century and 600 issues after the first German edition of PLAYBOY went on sale in 1972, the makers now want to honour the success story with a unique campaign under the motto ‘50 years. 50 covers’. This will see the #08/2022 anniversary issue (on sale from 14 July 2022) come in 50 different covers designed by 50 different artists from all over the world. To mark the anniversary, the publisher has called on agencies and creatives to take part in a creative competition. They are looking for ads for real customers that playfully engage with the Playboy brand and the familiar bunny logo.