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February 11, 2012

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Daily Memo: Gaming:

Vegas is inspiring, but not buying, ideas for tourism ads

Professionals say they can handle promotion themselves

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Justin M. Bowen

A view of the Las Vegas Strip in October from the Strip’s south end.

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Monday, Nov. 9, 2009 | 2 a.m.

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With Las Vegas tourism in the dumps, Virginia Ridgway, a retired gift shop owner in Goldfield — a mining boomtown decades before Vegas became a vacation hot spot — is doing her part.

The longtime volunteer for the Nevada Commission on Tourism has trademarked a new slogan to sell Las Vegas and printed it on hats, shirts and casino chips.

She hosted a luncheon to present her catchphrase, “Deal Vegas In,” to tourism bigwigs in Las Vegas including honchos with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

They responded the way they have to the many ideas that the public has offered over the years: thanks, but no thanks.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said the message was too gambling-centric to work for Las Vegas, which now markets itself as a multifaceted resort destination where people go for shopping, dining and entertainment.

“While you might not agree, it is my belief that “Deal Vegas In” results in too strong of a casino message,” Terry Jicinsky, senior vice president of marketing for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, wrote in a politely worded rejection letter.

That irks Ridgway, who blames politics for quashing outsiders’ ideas and says the tourism folks need to try something new.

“You can apply it to anything,” she said. “Getting married? Deal Vegas in. Want a Broadway show? Deal Vegas in. It’s a figure of speech that doesn’t have to be about gambling.”

Teri Laursen, chairman of the Las Vegas territory for the Nevada Commission on Tourism, which promotes mostly non-gambling tourism outside of Las Vegas, was sympathetic to Ridgway.

“I think it has definite potential,” said Laursen, tourism director of the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas at Primm.

Ridgway isn’t the only Nevadan who thinks Las Vegas needs a change-up to improve its losing streak.

Las Vegas has long inspired advertising ideas from members of the public, who send letters with ideas for slogans and ideas for television spots as well as videotapes and CDs of recorded songs to pitch Vegas. The produced items range from slickly produced jingles to “guys in their garage,” according to Randy Snow, executive creative director at R&R Partners, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor Authority’s longtime ad agency and the creative team behind the “What Happens Here, Stays Here” campaign.

Snow said Nevadans are passionate in wanting to help boost tourism by contributing unsolicited slogan ideas.

“It’s not that the (public’s) ideas aren’t good from time to time,” Snow said. “But at this point, there aren’t too many scenarios we haven’t touched upon at some point. It’s not like we see something and say, ‘Wow, we’ve never heard of that.’ ”

Indeed, in coming up with “What Happens Here,” R&R copywriters came up with dozens of slogans that were similar but, in hindsight, didn’t have the obvious ring of the final choice. (Among the dozens that didn’t make the final cut were “The secrets are yours” and “You know you want to.”)

Snow is diplomatic but firm in his criticism. “Everybody thinks they can do what we do. We’ve all probably got ideas for ads and screenplays knocking around in our heads. And I think people figure they’ve got nothing to lose by sending something in.”

But?

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is paying R&R to come up with its own ideas, not buy rights to use others’, Snow said. (And make no mistake: These unsolicited slogans come with implied or stated expectations for financial compensation.) Given the popularity of Las Vegas as a muse for aspiring marketers with entrepreneurial instincts, it’s a relief for Snow that R&R, to his knowledge, hasn’t been sued by anyone claiming that R&R stole his idea — whether similar to “What Happens Here” or not.

R&R regularly polls consumers, business meeting planners and, more recently, the business owners who organize such meetings, to make sure people are comfortable with the message. There’s no evidence, they say, that the “What Happens Here” theme is wearing thin.

“It’s funny how you discover things, Snow said. “Sometimes it’s a simple thing and sometimes it’s not. You might think, ‘Anyone could have thought of that’ — but nobody did.”

Which is about how Ridgway feels about hers.

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