Christie Hefner is careful to preserve the integrity and cachet of an upscale lifestyle brand.

Hefner:    Well, I think at its essence what pornography is it satisfy the desire that people have for sexually explicit content that, you know, is a very strong human desire, and people who do it well understand it and know how to do it.  I think what Playboy aspired to from the beginning was to represent the good life and part of that was the attraction between men and women and the romantic part of life, and that is also a very strong human desire and one that is shared by women and men and one that’s shared around the world.  So, we see our role as something quite different and that influences the standards with which we approach the content and the breadth of the content that we can deliver appropriately under the Playboy brand.  And in turn has allowed us to create a real consumer products brand.  So, I think the lesson is to actually understand what you believe your brand mission is and then to be true to that in terms of how the consumers see it, and that’s a combination of your own standards and some regular, I think, research into whether the consumers are perceiving your brand the way you want them to, which we do, I don't know, let’s say every 10 years, we did it just in this last year with the company called Red Scout.  And that gives you that very important, sort of gut check from the outside in.