Vegas again exploiting ban on Super Bowl ads

Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2004 | 10:53 a.m.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, rebuffed again in its bid to have television advertisements promoting Las Vegas during the Super Bowl, is rolling out a $1.5 million campaign today telling viewers they're likely to have more fun here than in Houston, the site of the National Football League's championship game.

The NFL told the LVCVA more than a year ago that Las Vegas would be forbidden from advertising during the 2003 Super Bowl broadcast because the ads promoted gambling. The media coverage of the ban gave Las Vegas far more publicity than it would have paid for, said officials with R&R Partners, the LVCVA's contracted advertising consultants.

The story continued to percolate when Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, an LVCVA board member and a lawyer by trade, suggested that the board sue the NFL over the ban. The LVCVA decided in October not to pursue a lawsuit.

The controversy over the ban gave legs to R&R's "Vegas Stories" ad campaign, which created a stir of its own with its not-too-subtle "What happens here, stays here" message.

Rob Dondero, executive vice president of R&R and one of the strategists for the LVCVA account, said months ago, the NFL was approached again about advertising during the Super Bowl and again, Las Vegas was shot down. Now, the way R&R looks at it, the LVCVA punted, the NFL fumbled the return and Las Vegas recovered and is getting ready to score.

Beginning today and running through Jan. 31, the day before the game, the LVCVA will run a 30-second spot inviting guests to the city, telling viewers Las Vegas will be more exciting than the host city.

The ad is simple and was inexpensive to make. And, it's not a "Vegas Stories" style of ad.

"It cost maybe $5,000 to produce because we used some footage that had already been shot and it was easy to put together," said Randy Snow, R&R's creative consultant on the LVCVA account. "It only took us about a day to put it together at Century Productions."

The visual is night shot of the Las Vegas Strip from a helicopter, looking south from above Spring Mountain Road. The audio is football crowd noise. And the text message across the bottom of the screen reads, "It's the biggest game of the year. ... Hundreds of thousands of fans ... are on the edge of their seats ... living and dying with every play ... going nuts on ever snap. ... If only it was this exciting ... at the game in Houston." The ad ends with the "Only Vegas" logo and a final "Join us February 1" message at the conclusion.

Snow noted that the ad creators purposely did not use the phrase "Super Bowl" because it is a registered trademark name belonging to the NFL.

Dondero said the campaign includes spots that would run Wednesdays through Sundays on cable networks MSNBC, Fox Sports, VH1, ESPN, ESPN 2, Food Network, Travel Channel, Fine Living, CNN Headline News, Bravo, E!, Comedy Central and TBS.

A similar spot has been produced to run on the day of the game with some minor copy changes. That ad will run in four Las Vegas feeder markets -- Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Dallas -- on all the major networks, including the pregame and postgame shows on CBS, the network carrying the game.

"We put our feelers out early, but they said absolutely no way, just like last year," Dondero said of the NFL.

He said he doesn't expect as much media hype over the ban this year. R&R estimated that Las Vegas received $6.5 million in free publicity last year calculating the value of news stories and televised appearances by Goodman.

Although the "What happens here, stays here" theme is on the shelf, Dondero said a slate of six fresh ads using that theme would appear later in the year. Even LVCVA President Manny Cortez's appearance at Preview 2004, an annual economic development presentation, will be about the convention-oriented "We work as hard as we play" advertising campaign and not the controversial ads.

"Super Bowl Sunday is one of the most exciting days to be here," Snow said. "There's a group dynamic involved in watching the game and there are people on both sides, some of them betting on the outcome.

"Because of the ticket prices and the difficulty of getting tickets, the Super Bowl has almost become a corporate outing," he said. "In fact, most of the seats are owned by corporations. But Las Vegas is much more egalitarian, we have salt-of-the-earth fans who are here to have a good time. And that's the message we're trying to deliver."