Friday, Sept. 9, 2005 | 6:08 a.m.
Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4067.
WEEKEND EDITION
Sept. 10-11, 2005
Making its mishandled $1 slogan deal right has been a costly endeavor for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
The LVCVA disclosed last week that it received a $118,000 bill for legal advice that basically says it should not have turned over the valuable trademark rights to "What happens here, stays here" to its longtime advertising agency, R&R Partners.
That was just the tab for the first month's work of the high-priced international law firm of Morrison & Foerster, which also has been asked to represent the LVCVA in a trademark infringement lawsuit R&R Partners brought against a California woman.
By the time the San Francisco-based Morrison & Foerster is through fixing this mess, its legal fees could easily triple or soar even higher.
"Any good public relations person would have been able to give them this advice for a lot less money," says local restaurateur Bill Welter, an advertising veteran who spearheaded the 1980s "Where's the Beef?" campaign for the Wendy's hamburger chain.
Craig Walton, a former UNLV professor who runs the Nevada Center for Public Ethics, says the legal guidance from Morrison & Foerster is a lesson in "remedial public ethics" for the 50-year-old LVCVA -- an expensive lesson.
"They could have learned this much earlier by entering into dialogues with tourism agencies in other cities to find out the standard practice in this kind of case," he says.
But the LVCVA didn't do that last year before it secretly sold "What happens here, stays here" to R&R Partners for $1 to bolster the advertising agency's legal standing in the trademark suit.
And now the taxpayers, who fund the LVCVA, are paying the price.
The good news is that the 14-member LVCVA board, which hasn't done a stellar job of keeping watch over LVCVA executives in recent years, is looking to bring public accountability to the tourism agency.
A special committee, headed by Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, the board's chairman, approved a series of Morrison & Foerster recommendations last week aimed at ensuring that future marketing slogans remain in the hands of the LVCVA.
The recommendations, expected to be discussed Tuesday before the entire LVCVA board, also are designed to prevent LVCVA executives from operating behind closed doors in the future.
"This is encouraging to me," Walton says. "They're biting the bullet, and they seem to grasp the issues now."
Unfortunately, however, the LVCVA still doesn't have the rights back to "What happens here, stays here," which means the LVCVA is continuing to miss out on lucrative merchandising opportunities.
"You want the merchandise out there when the slogan is peaking," Welter says. "Every day that goes by it loses its impact."
The LVCVA, we're told, won't try to regain possession of the slogan's rights until the trademark suit is resolved. That's because R&R Partners, as the lead plaintiff, has to maintain the legal position that it owns the slogan.
In the meantime, one LVCVA board member, Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson, says the expensive legal tab, though distasteful, is necessary to restore the public's confidence in the LVCVA.
"Nobody wants to pay a whole bunch of money for attorneys' fees," says Gibson, who chaired the board when the slogan was turned over to R&R Partners without the board's approval.
"But we have to be willing to pay whatever it takes to conclude this litigation and help us establish these new policies."
Gibson says the board has learned a lot from this expensive experience.
"I don't think we're going to have problems like these ever again," he says.
Hopefully, the public can take those words to the bank.
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