Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Jack Sheehan says tourism slogan accurately describes a visitor’s feelings about Las Vegas

If you're a Baby Boomer, like yours truly, then you remember advertising slogans like "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz" (Alka Seltzer) and the "Un-Cola (7 Up)." A later generation certainly knows that it was Wendy's that poked fun at McDonald's with its "Where's the Beef?" campaign. And a current generation of tube watchers is fully aware that "Just Do It" suggests that if they put on the swoosh of Nike they are more likely to pursue their passion.

Some 20 years from now, long after the current run of commercials conceived and produced by R&R Advertising for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority have been stored in the archives, the next generation of media watchers will know that "What Happens Here, Stays Here," refers only to this wild place we call home.

The LVCVA campaign, now in its fourth year, has become fully integrated into the American vernacular. It has been used by First Lady Laura Bush on the Tonight Show, has been uttered at the Academy Awards ceremony, and has been twisted and turned into a punch line by at least a dozen stand-up comedians.

It has also won nearly every major advertising award coveted by agencies, including the Communication Arts Annual Award and a National Gold Addy in 2005, and the Worldwide Adrian Award for Best of Show in 2006.

"With a total lack of humility, I have to tell you that what this campaign has meant to me as an ad man and to our agency as a whole is not just like a golfer winning the U.S. Open," R&R chief honcho Billy Vassiliadis told me, "it's like winning the Grand Slam. There will maybe be seven national slogans that come out in my lifetime that become part of popular culture, and What Happens Here is one of them."

A litmus test suggesting how pervasive the slogan has become was conducted over the last year as I interviewed 112 different people, locals and tourists alike, for a documentary film I am writing and co-producing based on my book "Skin City."

Exactly 57 of my subjects, without prompting from my questions, at some point in their on-camera interviews mentioned the What Happens Here slogan to illustrate a point they were making about our city. For those of you who are mathematically challenged, that's a fraction over 50 percent.

I personally think the campaign is brilliant and that it strikes exactly the right chord about what Las Vegas means to the average visitor out there looking for an exciting vacation. It's simple, and yet has great dimension. And the slogan allows viewers to fill in their own blanks about what they want to do in Las Vegas that they wouldn't want circulated back home.

"To a group of 25-year-olds here for a bachelor party, it'll conjure up a sense of naughtiness, escape and a secret-keeping thing," says Vassiliadis. "But to a 75-year-old couple from Des Moines, it'll be violating their low-cholesterol order from their doctor, and having shrimp cocktail at 3 o'clock in the morning and not telling their kids about it."

The commercials are consistently cute, and most importantly funny. You find yourself smiling or laughing out loud at them, as opposed to so many locally produced commercials that force you to dive for the remote (i.e., the spots featuring "The Heavy Hitter" and car peddler John Barr). Seeing as every economic indicator in Las Vegas - visitor count, airport traffic, hotel occupancy rates and gaming drop - has markedly increased since the commercials first aired in 2003, it would be hard to argue that the campaign is anything less than a smashing success.

However there are other respected Las Vegas individuals, among them former UNLV football star and NFL great Randall Cunningham, who is now a preacher leading his own congregation called Remnant Ministries, who have an entirely different take on the What Happens Here campaign.

"As a pastor, I don't use that slogan," Cunningham told me. "The one I use is 'What Happens in Vegas gets exposed.' As for R&R, it's good for marketing. And I should say I worked as an intern at R&R when I was in college and I have great respect for Billy V. But my job is not to see people get in trouble, like when a man comes here and cheats on his wife with five prostitutes and then goes home and gives her the AIDS virus.

"My job is to say, 'That's wrong, my Brother,' or 'That's wrong, my Sister.' That slogan is deception, actually. It's just a way of showing people that we can hide whatever is going on, but the Bible teaches us that there is nothing hidden from God. We're not supposed to do what we want to do. We're supposed to do what He wants us to do."

Another long-time Las Vegas resident, who didn't want her name used, said she is constantly reminding her childhood friends from Oklahoma that she leads a very conservative life here.

"From the commercials, some of them think we're all a bunch of swingers out here," she said.

And then there's a third take on the commercials, which is to accept that we live in a city that is dramatically different from every other on the planet, and laugh along with it. That view was best expressed by headliner Rita Rudner, who told us after living here for six years, "I know a lot of wild stuff goes on here, but no one ever invites me ... We were looking at kindergartens recently for our daughter, and I believe it was the first time I'd ever seen a playground with a stripper pole."

Edgy, controversial, suggestive, and yet something to smile at. That's why these commercials work: they are exactly like the city they are promoting.

Jack Sheehan's column runs every other week.

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