Now there’s a blog headline that can’t be ignored, right?
With just four words it proves the case of the marketing effort I got a chance to learn more about at the annual workshop for the National Association of Bar Executives (NABE) Communication Section – in Las Vegas, appropriately enough.
In a session titled “Marketing Las Vegas in the Pasta Economy,” Terry Jicinsky, the senior vice president of operations for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, talked about the “What happens here, stays here” campaign.
Before I go into some details, I’ll explain the pasta reference. Jicinsky defined it as an indicator of the choices Americans are making in terms of discretionary income. That is, the number of people/families staying home on a Saturday night eating a cheap pasta meal versus going out for dinner.
Makes sense.
Las Vegas clearly is a discretionary destination. And that distinction requires a different approach to marketing and public relations.
Jicinsky outlined his case to the professional communicators in the room by considering the challenges we have in common:
-How do we get our message out?
-Where do we get our message out?
-How do we get people to care about our message?
-How do we get people over a certain perception?
Vegas certainly is perceived a certain way.
But it’s not by accident.
The “What happens here…” campaign actually began back in 2002. Only recently has Vegas gone back to it, as its marketing bread and butter.
But Jicinsky spent a lot of his time talking about the impact of the recession on the convention business in Vegas – and a bit of Vegas-bashing from President Obama – that forced Vegas to go on the offensive to and create a sub-campaign for 2009 – Vegas Means Business.
With 22,000 annual business events in Vegas and all the people who attend them, Jicinsky said the recession-fueled drop in convention business has been brutal for the efforts to fill the city’s 145,000 hotel rooms.
To try and increase the meeting business, Jicinsky highlighted the first of three points for communicators:
*Take on a cause
The cause, to combat “the anti-convention in Vegas” crowd, unified the hotels and politicians to get out in the media and tell the one story that companies with conventions to plan needed to hear – that Las Vegas has more hotels and more meeting rooms than anyone else… and is built for the convention business.
As part of that effort, and beyond it during the recession, Vegas turned to Jicinsky’s second piece of advice:
*Play the media
It’s the free publicity card… Give the media a story. With overall tourism to the city tailing off in the recession, the “Vegas Bound” campaign and Cranfills Gap, Texas came into the picture. Vegas offered all of the small town’s hard working citizens a free vacation. The campaign got huge play in the media, including several major media hits. Here’s a look at how Vegas packaged up part of the story on its YouTube channel:
Jicinsky said coverage of the exploits of the citizens of Cranfills Gap earned them more than 400 free mentions on TV, in print and online.
The playing of the media continued with the return of the “What happens here, stays here” theme. Ads like this were once again aimed at reminding the average American why Vegas is attractive, by offering a unique twist on life in their own home towns:
Jicinsky’s third point of advice for marketers and communicators was:
*Tell a story
Can’t get any simpler than that. Jicinsky said every business and organization can find their own way to tell their own stories, and make their content top of mind with their target audience.
One of the stories Jicinsky said that Vegas also has tried to tell through marketing is about its many restaurants, in an effort to remind would-be visitors that the city has many great places to eat. You may have seen that in its “Your Vegas is Showing” campaign.
I know I’ve rambled here a bit, but the session with Jicinsky was really interesting and hopefully this brought some of it to light for you.
Going into the session with Jicinsky, I would have argued that the “What happens here…” campaign has become so entrenched in the U.S. that they could pull all the TV ads and other significant marketing and still not see a drop in tourism.
That may be true. But clearly Vegas still has a need to communicate and a strategy for staying a top business and discretionary income destination for people who like – and can put up with – the sinful nature of Sin City.
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