Hard Rock Hotel alters its marketing tactics

Friday, Aug. 27, 2004 | 10:33 a.m.

The Hard Rock Hotel is trading babes for bunnies and cleavage for kitties in its new billboard advertising campaign.

So far, critics are viewing the cartoon illustrations -- which have generous portions of sexual double-entendre -- with good humor, although state Gaming Control Board member Bobby Siller had no comment on the messages that debuted Wednesday.

Siller has been one of Hard Rock's toughest critics, blasting the resort's use of double-entendre to present a message making light of cheating, drug use and marital infidelity.

Siller led the Control Board's efforts to levy a $300,000 fine -- a maximum amount of $100,000 per count -- against the hotel for its controversial advertising campaign. Siller also encouraged a more rigorous internal review of promotional materials.

The Hard Rock agreed to a settlement, and the Control Board, with Siller opposed, signed off on the deal. But the Nevada Gaming Commission didn't agree, setting the stage for a hearing on the matter. While some commissioners wanted to air the advertising issue because critics raised concerns about sexually explicit content in some ads, others indicated they wanted the hearing because they felt the Hard Rock may have been dealt with too harshly.

Attorneys for both the resort and the attorney general's office were stunned and embarked on a dual course of going back to negotiating a settlement while preparing for a hearing, which could occur in November.

The unveiling of the new billboards, one on the Hard Rock property and another on West Flamingo Road, near the Palms, overshadowed three filings this week with the Control Board. The Hard Rock, through attorney Jeffrey Silver, filed a new motion to dismiss the charges. Simultaneously, the board received two "friend of the court" briefs from the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada and the Nevada Resort Association in support of the Hard Rock's position.

Phil Shalala, vice president of marketing for the Hard Rock, said the billboard content, created by New York-based DiMassimo Carr Brand Advertising, which describes itself as a "buzz marketer," is designed to make people laugh at the ad controversy.

"There's no one specific goal," Shalala said. "We're just changing the things we do and the way we go about speaking to our customer in an irreverent way. There's no underlying message or objective out there."

The ad, which shows cartoon images of a cat, a beaver and two rabbits with the message "Another clean & inoffensive billboard from your friends at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino," was not designed to be disrespectful of regulators, Shalala said.

"I would say if we went out and put up another billboard that was risque, sexy and showed a lot of cleavage, then people could say we were saying, 'Nyah, nyah, nyah,' to regulators," he said.

But Michael Wixom, an attorney and a member of the group known as the Main Street Billboard Committee, which has been critical of some of the Hard Rock's suggestive ads, disagrees.

"They seem to push this as far as they can go and as a community, we must determine to what extent we are going to allow ourselves to be a one-dimensional community to the extent that we market to a very narrow segment of that community," Wixom said.

He said for the long term, marketing to the audience that can be amused by sexual innuendo, whether through the suggestive Hard Rock ads, the cartoons or the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority's "What happens here, stays here" campaign is not in the best interests of the community.

But another critic was more forgiving.

Carole Gates, a spokeswoman for American Mothers Inc. in Las Vegas, said "in their own saucy way, they're thumbing their noses (at regulators), but at least it's not in an offensive way."

"I was surprised when I saw it," Gates said. "I laughed out loud. I'd rather have those cartoon characters up there (on a billboard) than some unclothed woman."

Asked about the double-entendres illustrated by the cartoons, Gates said she was in the car with two teenage daughters and a young son who saw the ad and "they didn't get it."

Meanwhile, the Hard Rock took another shot at winning dismissal of the Jan. 21 complaint against it, filing a motion to dismiss on Monday.

In the motion, the resort argued that "a government agency ... cannot act as a censor based on its perception about what it considers to be in good taste."

"Absent any inherently misleading statements or any statements advertising illegal products or services, any attempts to regulate advertising content are presumptively unconstitutional," the brief says.

The motion continues that "even if one accepts the complainant's argument that an infinitesimal minority of patrons may misunderstand the satirical nature of the advertisements, courts have made it clear that only 'inherently deceptive' and not 'potentially deceptive' advertisements may be prohibited."

"Moreover, given current Las Vegas community standards, the advertisements, as a legal matter, also cannot be characterized as obscenity," the motion says.