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The video interview below, dated May 25, 2022, is revealing. In it Kohn reveals that he fired the sales staff, killed the advertising revenue part of the business, and restructured it along the lines of his mission, as a lifestyle brand with the focus on pleasure.
At about the 16:30 mark in the video, Kohn is asked what he thinks makes for a great leader. Kohn's response is that a great leader would know his limitations and would surround himself with people who are "better than they are, smarter, whatever you want to use as an adjective..."
He's not Alexander the Great, he's Harvey Milktoast, leading from behind, delegating instead of innovating, calculating his chances for losing instead of strategizing ways to win.
When Kohn talks about "creators" what he's actually describing are botox-infused bimbos schlepping for money on what used to be called the "centerfold" platform, a tic-tok wannabe copycat with which Kohn has decimated the media empire Hefner built.
But, it's in the basis of the mission statement in Kohn's attempted turnaround or restructuring of Playboy that he it's it horribly, tragically wrong. Kohn wants to reimagine Playboy as some sort of amorphous "lifestyle brand", focused on pleasure. When Kohn says he and his team got into Playboy's "DNA" he missed the point completely. Had he not tried to drive deep into the essence of what Playboy was, and instead simply looked at a few of the magazines, he might have seen what the mission was, stated clearly on the cover of each and every issue of the magazine, on the masthead, where it says,
It was right there, right in front of his eyes, in bold CAPITAL letters.
Kohn completely misses the point. Instead trying to make Playboy over according to his plan, his vision, his purpose, instead of simply maintaining and restoring the original - and highly successful - concept of providing entertainment for men, he chose a new path, one that led straight to the disastrous results clearly demonstrated by Playboy's stock performance, the company's bottom line, enterprise value, and diminished brand awareness.
Playboy was, always and everywhere, an entertainment company, with the focus on providing entertainment for men. Kohn, consciously or otherwise, just didn't get the memo.
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That says everything about Kohn's management style.
"ENTERTAINMENT FOR MEN".
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