Playing for Keeps

- Mike Beirne

Las Vegas had the slots and The Strip, but needed a stronger adult message to attract visitors. That's when the stories began.

Las Vegas had a fire to extinguish.

The media was swarming over videotapes found in a raid of suspected al-Qaeda cells in Detroit and Madrid. Federal prosecutors in the Motor City alleged in memos obtained by the Associated Press in early August that footage shot by terrorists possibly casing three casinos was shown to Las Vegas officials who then ignored it, fearing tourism would suffer. The glitz, lights and bustle of The Strip is as good a visual as a burning building for TV news reporters anxious to tell the world that Jaws is coming, but the city fathers wanted to keep the beaches open. Crews from ABC's Nightly News and CNN were en route, and the Today Show had booked Mayor Oscar Goodman for a morning segment.

At stake was the cavalcade of visitors from across the globe that the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority welcomes each year: the birthday party revelers, prom celebrants, bachelor weekenders, concertgoers and conventioneers the LVCVA counts on to fill the 130,000 hotel rooms, nine million square feet of meeting and exhibit space, and 67,000 airplane seats that land daily at McCarran Airport. If the report was true, even the LVCVA's $97 million annual marketing budget couldn't compete with the specter of terrorism spooking its guests.

"Las Vegas has been such a hot dateline for five years, these stories just catch fire," said Billy Vassiliadis, CEO at R&R Partners, the Las Vegas ad agency steeped in the media mess descending upon its biggest client.

Within minutes, a team of crack strategists conferred by phone on how to kill the erroneous tale. Goodman convinced the U.S. attorney general to ask a federal judge to lift a gag order on the Detroit terror investigation to allow for full disclosure of the details. An FBI agent then told reporters that Goodman never saw the videos and didn't cover up any danger. Vassiliadis got on the horn with the local police, Nevada Homeland Security, and the FBI, and asked if the message they'd been repeating for the last three years-that there had been no specific or credible threats against the city-was still valid.

"Absolutely," the agencies brass replied. Rossi Ralenkotter, the LVCVA president and CEO, released a statement naming law enforcement agencies that confirmed there was no credible threat to the city. And in a show of paternal reassurance, he added that if such information actually existed, the public would be alerted "even if it meant visitors decided to stay home."

The coverup angle was dying, and the story looked more like an information sharing tiff between law enforcement agencies-not juicy enough for national broadcast. The news trucks turned around, and the Today Show canceled Goodman's appearance. A threat to Nevada's largest industry had been repelled. Welcome to Las Vegas, city of contrasts. More than a destination, it's a state of mind. As in, live it up here today, because you never know what will happen tomorrow.

"I live in fear of losing, and I look at most of my business life as win or lose. It's getting more visitors, it's beating other destinations and it's turning the press trucks around," said Vassiliadis, 48, who for years has painted the desert oasis as America's playground. Following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a sagging stock market and tales of corporate misdeeds unfolding across America, Vassiliadis and Ralenkotter hit upon a winning idea. They realized that Vegas could position itself as a center of guilt-free indulgence and "adult freedom" in what they called the "New Normalcy," a landscape littered with an array of uncertainty and worry. Little did they know they'd hit the jackpot.

Both men share Brandweek's Grand Marketer of the Year award for creating the wildly successful strategy and "What happens here, stays here" ad campaign, which has helped make Vegas hotter than a blowtorch.

The oft-repeated tagline has won a pop culture status on a par with Budweiser's "Whassup?!," Wendy's "Where's the beef?" and a Paris Hilton video. Indeed, the line has passed through the lips of everyone from Oscar host Billy Crystal to First Lady Laura Bush-her retort to Jay Leno's question about whether she saw the Chippendale dancers during a Vegas stop.

It was Ralenkotter, 56, who started as a market analyst with the convention authority 31 years ago, and who championed the tourism campaign's shift three years ago from a property amenities message to one with an emotional connection-and enough sizzle-to resonate with a wide array of audience targets. They also co-wrote a five-year plan to keep the momentum rolling by tapping into niches: conventions, international visitors, gay and lesbian travel, and accelerating strategies like customized online marketing, and promotions like Las Vegas Wine Week and Shop Las Vegas partnerships.

"I've never had two days that were ever quite the same," said Ralenkotter. "To be able to market your hometown is a bonus for me but the vibrancy, the buzz and excitement of Las Vegas; you can just feel it. When all that is part of what you do, and you see the excitement people demonstrate when they are here and the great product we have to sell, those are all drivers for me."

The gambling mecca is on its way to a record, drawing more than 37 million visitors who will drop more than $32.8 billion dollars during 2004. While the national average for hotel occupancy is 59.2%, Sin City has been able to keep that needle between an astounding 85-90% so far this year. Feeding those hotels is McCarran, one of just two of the nation's top 20 airports-Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., is the other-that have seen more origin and destination passengers walk through their terminals this year.

Odds are television viewers can't go a night without seeing Las Vegas on the tube either. NBC's Las Vegas, starring James Caan, was the first to ante up (although it shoots on a soundstage 300 miles away in L.A.). The current season will again reinforce the advertising, with Rob Lowe starring as a 'round-the-clock casino doc in CBS' Dr. Vegas. Discovery Channel's American Casino will feature the daily goings-on of the Green Valley Ranch and Casino in nearby Henderson, while Fox is running The Casino featuring Tim Poster and Tom Breitling, new owners of the Golden Nugget.

The Vegas theme has even worked its way into dialogue of such shows as CSI and Frasier thanks to ads that leave enough of a story to the imagination: the newlywed who leaves her husband at the chapel to rush back to her convention; the nervous woman who blots out embarrassing portions of a postcard before mailing it; and the guy who requests a wake-up call to his cell phone because he doesn't know where he'll end up sleeping.

Vegas also can be linked to the resurgence of online gambling and casinos installing poker rooms, thanks to celebrities on the Bravo Channel playing Texas Hold 'Em at the Palm, which emerged as a Gen X and Gen Y haven after hosting the 2002 cast of MTV's Real People. Poker parties have sprouted in living rooms nationwide and ESPN's World Series of Poker presented by the Harrah's Horseshoe Casino last year raked in 1.2 million viewers. The argument can be made that Vassiliadis and Ralenkotter don't deserve such credit for a booming city whose spirit of oneupmanship had been a given well before the Stardust outdid the topless burlesque dancers at the Dunes in 1958 with a stylish stage show flashing bare breasts amid hydraulic stages, a swimming pool and an ice rink. Besides, Steve Wynn started the rebirth of the megaresort in 1989 when he opened the Mirage, the first new hotel built on Las Vegas Boulevard in 35 years, featuring a white tiger habitat, dolphin pool and fire-and-water-belching volcano.

Henry Gluck added the must-see quotient to Caesars Palace by unveiling the extravagant Forum Shops in 1997 featuring upscale retailers like Gucci, Christian Dior and Prada. He also recruited Wolfgang Puck to open a Spago restaurant within the resort. Soon Emeril Lagasse, Sirio Maccioni and other star chefs arrived, turning the land of the all-you-can-eat buffet into a cuisine capital. Spas and opulent theme palaces-Bellagio, Luxor, Venetian, Paris Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, New York New York, Excalibur-followed, changing the streetscape with dancing water, the Manhattan skyline, an Eiffel Tower, a pyramid, castles and gondolas.

Las Vegas already had the magic, what with concerts and stage shows from Cher to Siegfried & Roy to Cirque de Soleil selling out nightly. But Ralenkotter and Vassiliadis not only bottled the potion, they figured out its essential source. Before "Vegas Stories," the gauzy town conjured up so many different images with consumers that its overall portrait was confusing and fragmented. That is, until the authority and agency collaboration struck upon the notion of adult freedom.

"Las Vegas is not viewed as a commitment," said Vassiliadis. "People are becoming commitment fatigued. They have commitments 24 hours a day, so they come here to completely shut it off. For a group of 23-year-old females, we've become the bachelorette capital of the universe. For a 72-year-old married couple from Des Moines with a cholesterol issue, we're the place where they can hide from their kids and their doctor and eat shrimp cocktail 'til two in the morning. People don't come here to act naughty. They want to feel naughty and they want to feel like they're getting away with something." Vassiliadis ran political campaigns after graduating with a political science degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The Democratic Party stalwart won elections for his political clients and caught the eye of Sig Rogich, R&R's president at the time. Vassiliadis was enchanted by script writing, production and other elements of the creative side, and made it clear he didn't want to be typecast as the agency's election guy. He eventually became Rogich's right hand man and ran the agency as Rogich devoted time to running the Reagan campaign in 1984 and the Bush campaigns in 1988 and 1992. The little shop in the desert grew to 220 employees with more than $180 million in billings when Rogich sold his agency to Vassiliadis and Salt Lake City partner Bob Henrie in 1992.

Vassiliadis has been described by associates as someone who is at his best when things are not going well. "Billy is like Dick Butkus," said Mayor Goodman. "He'll put his hands around an issue no matter how much the opposition stands in his way and tackle it."

Anxiety was indelibly ingrained in his psyche at Wrigley Field during a September day in 1969 when he watched his first-place Cubs blow their division lead for good. Apropos of Vegas, he worries daily that his "Vegas Stories" campaign might lose its lucky streak and delves regularly into consumer measurement-a discipline from his election campaign management beginnings-to convince himself the ads are still relevant.

Oddly, Las Vegas was a healthy tourist destination in 1998-the hotel occupancy rate was climbing to a record 89% by 2000-when Vassiliadis grabbed onto agency research and proposed that the city had to change its message. The predominant Vegas image then was gambling and shows. But those lures were available in Atlantic City and hundreds of other cities that were less than a four-hour drive from a riverboat, Indian gaming or land-based casinos. Glitzy ads from the new billion-dollar properties at least were displaying the town as a great dining getaway, an upscale shopping paradise and even as a golf destination. But travelers could find those attractions in San Francisco, Rodeo Drive and Myrtle Beach, he reasoned. Vegas was losing its exclusivity and lacked a unifying idea that could be a clutter-buster.

Ralenkotter, then senior vp-marketing, agreed. Ralenkotter is a numbers junkie who likes analyzing the "hell" out of a marketing challenge, said Vassiliadis. His Arizona State University marketing professors taught him that there was no crime for having too much marketing research data.

"When you are trying to ascertain new products and figure where the growth of a market is, [the LVCVA] has some decent numbers," said David Van Kalsbeek, vp-sales for MGM Grand. "We've used the numbers to validate key feeder markets and the demographics coming out of those markets."

Vegas had done a decent job educating consumers about the new attractions that were built up over a short period as the city grew from a Nevada gaming destination to an international getaway. But Ralenkotter knew competition for the convention dollar was intensifying and the potential loss of customers meant that Vegas had to evolve.

"We needed to get that emotional tide that somebody gets with the brand and, because we're an international marketer, we're not only competing with other resorts and cruise lines but all other destinations and trying to capture discretionary dollars," said Ralenkotter. "We needed to get our message out from all that clutter." Property owners outside the board who had invested billions building their amenities initially questioned the strategy shift because it meant their resorts would not be showcased in the advertising. Yet Ralenkotter stuck his chin out and explained that the Authority was adopting the branding approach because it was the right thing to do. The LVCVA, composed of a 13-member board of directors representing hotels, county, municipal and private business association interests, is seen as the objective third-party source for tourism statistics, and is deemed the destination marketing authority. So Ralenkotter's support for branding was highly influential. Goodman, again using the football metaphor, likened Ralenkotter to Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach-a great leader, quiet but so well respected that you want to execute for him when he asks you to perform. "It could have been very easy for Rossi to say 'No, we're not ready to change because things are going well,'" said Randy Snow, R&R's vp and executive creative director. "Yet he embraced it from day one, and I've got to give him credit for that."

R&R mobilized its research resources, launching qualitative account planning expeditions in Los Angeles-Las Vegas' primary feeder market-major cities like New York, secondary markets like Denver, Minneapolis, Dallas and Miami, and major airline hubs, including Chicago.

"We did an exhaustive amount of research where people told us that the biggest differentiator for Las Vegas was not the product," Vassiliadis said (see story, page M9). "The product, whether it was dining or great properties, was this great canvas on which they paint their experience and that was truly the differentiator."

The first campaigns circled and nipped at the edges of the big idea with a concept called the Las Vegas Freedom Party bowing in September 2000. Fictitious candidate Brook Wilder urged Americans to escape the drudgery of everyday life and start their own party with a trip to Vegas. Next came "What you want, when you want" and "Open 24 Hours," featuring characters like the Yukon man who yearned to escape the bitter cold for Vegas freedom by snapping photos of himself and placing the images into a Vegas photo album.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the branding initiative was interrupted for more tactical efforts, until 2002 when Don Rickles was recruited as the voice of the destination in the "Vegas calling" effort. In hindsight, officials now admit, both of those efforts were either too narrow or too broad.

The runway lights finally appeared, however, when copywriters Jeff Candido and Jason Hoff, now working with Arnold Worldwide, Boston, and BBDO, New York, respectively, penned the now famous tagline-a derivative of the traveling salesman's mantra-"What happens on the road, stays on the road." The account team was intrigued, but wondered how the slogan could be reckoned with "Only Vegas," the umbrella theme that was pitched to business travel. And did it truly connect with what consumers thought about Las Vegas?

"We kept hounding [Jeff and Jason] with how they came up with that line and they were forced to go back," said Vassiliadis. "They came back with qualitative and said, ' Look, people keep telling their stories.' Whenever our account planner sat down and tried to get [consumers] into a large discussion, they would get into their own personal anecdote, and they kind of smiled and they kind of didn't tell everybody at home the whole story."

Scripts were written, rough cuts with and without the new tagline were shot and tested online and before live groups in seven markets. People nodded and smiled at the cuts with the "What happens here, stays here" tag. Finished spots were made that alternated the "What happens" line and the "Only Vegas" umbrella theme and were tested again on shoppers intercepted at malls. Feedback was favorable, so R&R presented the spots to the Authority. The first batch aired during 2003 and quickly gained traction, even to the point of being parodied on Saturday Night Live.

"I think the smartest thing that we've ever done is let our customer determine what the emotional connection is," said Vassiliadis.

The campaign did have opponents, mostly locals, who complained that "Vegas Stories" depicted their community as too sleazy. One spot deemed exploitive by critics shows a woman in a sexy evening gown writhing in a limo's back seat, enraptured by the smell of new car leather before exiting at the airport dressed in proper conservative attire. Corporate headhunters offered anecdotes about how the Sin City image made the recruitment of executives for non-gaming businesses a hard sell. Even hotel meeting planners contended that CEOs might be reticent to take sales people away from their spouses for a meeting in the city where what happens there, stays there.

R&R hired an independent research firm to test the spots after their first run. Women surveyed found the lady in the limo empowering because she made the decision on when to be sexy-and not. Seventy-three percent of consumers polled said they were more likely to visit Las Vegas after seeing the ads and an equally proportionate number of business people said they were favorably disposed to the destination. However, the agency did bow to the wishes of the Masonic Lodge and dropped an execution featuring Masons with one of their comrades "missing" in action.

Into its second year, the latest batch of ads included an older couple dressing for a night on the town, a laughing bachelorette party, a couple looking for their lost luggage at a hotel they had yet to check into-all more playful than risque. The campaign's undertone is upscale enough that, like The Strip itself, it's reaching a wealthier and sophisticated clientele, said MGM Grand's Van Kalsbeek. That property also jumped into the experiential realm to target 25-34 year-old visitors with new Japanese and Mexican restaurants, a Tabu ultra-lounge, and other nightlife attractions like a Studio 54, Teatro showcase and concerts at the Garden Arena.

"A lot of the LVCVA emotional research was very helpful to us," said Van Kalsbeek. "We did projected imaging techniques to see what was the perception of MGM, our competition and of Vegas as a whole, and we aligned very closely with the emotional reasons why people come here. That's why we came up with the Maximum Vegas campaign [last fall]. We are Vegas to the max."

Will the fun come to an end? Reduced mentions on prime time TV, Leno and Letterman will be early indicators. Creative directors are thinking about how to evolve the "What happens here, stays here” tag, but the brand will not be repositioned.

"Here is the key, paint your experience," said Vassiliadis. "Come here to be free, act free and feel unburdened will always be the core of the messaging."