Hard Rock changing prescription for ads

By Liz Benston (contact)

Monday, Aug. 2, 2004 | 10:36 a.m.

A resort where customers and spokesmodels show plenty of skin recently kicked off the first leg of a new advertising effort that so far marks a significant departure from the blatant sexual images that have become a staple of Las Vegas.

Showing skin is old hat, officials at the Hard Rock Hotel say.

"That's what everybody else is doing," said Phil Shalala, vice president of marketing for the Hard Rock. "We were the ones that set the standard. We need to move away from skin and do something different."

That's the thinking behind an ad that began running in Hamptons magazine in July that resembles an actual doctor's note that can be ripped out of the publication.

The ad, which features a plain type on a plain black background, reads that the holder of the note "must be confined to bed for the next 48 hours."

"We're giving (Hard Rock customers) an excuse to get out of work on Monday," said Lee Goldstein, a managing partner of DiMassimo Carr Brand Advertising in New York, a self-described "buzz marketer" tapped by the Hard Rock in April to craft non-traditional advertising pieces.

"We've heard that people have been trying to hand them into their bosses and HR (departments) for a bit of relaxation."

The Hard Rock expects to spend up to $15 million on marketing initiatives over the next year and will continue to use several marketing companies already under contract, both local and out of state, to promote the resort.

The plain-Jane look isn't a reaction to the Hard Rock's well-publicized tangles with regulators, Shalala said.

Hard Rock officials agreed in April to pay $300,000 to settle a complaint by the Gaming Control Board that some of the property's advertising condoned cheating in casinos and other illegal activity. Though one ad featured a scantily clad woman, the complaint didn't address the sexual content of the ads. Still, community activists have used the incident as a platform to criticize what they view as increasingly salacious casino advertising around town.

The Nevada Gaming Commission rejected the Hard Rock settlement in part because of lingering concerns about how Hard Rock officials would review questionable content in the future. Hard Rock officials are discussing a second settlement as well as preparing for an upcoming hearing before the commission.

The Hard Rock won't be abandoning scantily clad spokesmodels altogether but will try new things to attract interest, Shalala said. Customers react to innuendo and humor as well as cleavage and other sexual content, he said.

Unlike traditional brand campaigns pursued by most businesses, the Hard Rock hasn't crafted a series of ads up-front to be rotated in various publications or other venues. Instead, marketing pieces will be crafted on demand based on customers' whims, said Shalala, who joined the Hard Rock less than a year ago from an advertising and marketing agency in San Diego.

"We do things as the market adjusts," he said.

The new ads will eventually be rotated into the mix to replace existing ads that have been modified to appease regulators.

The "doctor's note" ad is the first of what will likely be more ads and other pitches that will be placed in a few publications targeting a sophisticated, in-the-know audience, Shalala said. The Hard Rock hasn't yet determined whether it will run that ad elsewhere, he said.

Another future marketing piece consists of a "party guide" booklet for guests. Proposed topics include "How to politely split your time with a threesome," "White lies: how appropriate for the bride to be" and "Does waking up with singles in your undies make you slutty or an entrepreneur."

DiMassimo Carr also has pitched the Hard Rock on Internet marketing ideas such as a "camera room" in which the resort would give away a free room every day in exchange for broadcasting activity in the room live on the Internet.

Competition for buzz in Las Vegas has intensified with events at the Palms as well as the Fox network's "Casino" reality show at the Golden Nugget, Goldstein said. Those events include everything from broadcasts of "Celebrity Poker" on the Bravo network as well as a spokesmodel search.

"We want to get people talking about the Hard Rock again," he said.