"This Playmate of the Year celebration has given great impetus to Playboy here at the start of 2012," says editor-in-chief, Charl du Plessis. "We are experiencing wonderful momentum on all business fronts. Our circulation has grown 30% each of the past two months, our new digital subs was the highest seller of all titles in the business last month, and our social media shows that we are way ahead of the pack in terms of offering advertisers a 360 degree experience. We have turned the corner from a tough first year and we see the conversation changing away from the boring nudity-or-not towards one of how to get brands involved in this passionate and happy man-space. Most telling is that interim sales results predict an unprecedented sell-through of between 80-85% of our current January-February edition. We are clearly nowhere close to the upper limits of demand for Playboy in the 24-49 year old upper LSM target segment and becoming pretty hard to ignore."

The new Playmate of the Year will win a significant amount of prizes, including a R50 000 pendant with white and black diamonds, shaped as a Playboy bunny, as well as a trip to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. Members of the public can meet all of the Playboy Playmates at an open event in Johannesburg on the evening of Saturday, 18 February.