Las Vegas Marketng
'Las Vegas Stories' wins industry award
BY STEVEN MIHAILOVICH
BUSINESS PRESS
While the current marketing campaign for the Las Vegas destination avows that what happens here stays here, the same campaign's recent award as the best overall marketing strategy in the U.S proves that what comes out of here is happening.
Named 2004 Grand Marketer of the Year by the prestigious Brandweek magazine over campaigns for brand giants such as McDonald's, Apple's Ipod computer and Lacoste's Alligator line of apparel, the unexpected victory in the overall category solidifies the branding effort undertaken last year by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) and its advertising agency R&R Partners.
Coming just as the next sequence of the "Las Vegas Stories" campaign leaves the drawing board to be fleshed out, the award raises expectations for the next installment even higher. The recognition underscores R&R Partners' ability to meet the demand and highlights the significant strides made by the local marketing industry as a whole in a few short years.
"There are a lot of awards but this is one we view as most meaningful," says Billy Vassiliadis, CEO of R&R Partners. "It says that we are smart and have gone to the next level of thinking. You can always come up with a great idea and great TV spots, a bad agency as well as a good one. But branding says that you're paying attention to the customer, that you know them and that you're moving them along in a way that needs to be thought about. Branding is not a one-time thing, it's a process."
The Las Vegas Stories campaign and its now renowned slogan were launched in 2003 and production costs have totaled almost $3 million in its two-year run to date. The advertising campaign was the most market-tested in the destination's history, with focus groups and Internet as well as live survey assessing the contents both during and after production.
That analysis was crucial as the LVCVA and R&R entered unfamiliar territories by deciding that the time had come to go beyond simple ad spots promoting the city's various attractions and instead brand the entire destination.
That, in turn, required a lot of time spent in educating the LVCVA's board of directors on the reasons for moving to the next step, especially before a 12-member board that had many casino executives used to showcasing their offering.
"It's tough to go to the board and say spend $60 million of your dollars [to buy TV time] and hardly show any properties," says Vassiliadis. Adding that his agency could have gone the traditional route and "if it doesn't work but they get a lot of what is expected -- shots of the Strip and so on -- people wouldn't suspect the ad company. But if it is unexpected, it had better work or else you're the scapegoat."
In general, brand campaigns are broader and thereby more difficult to realize because they create psychological and even emotional attachments between the consumer and the product that become lasting. When someone orders a "Coke" at a restaurant instead of a soda pop or asks that a package be "FedEx-ed" instead of being mailed for overnight delivery, it is one result of branding.
There are three elements to a successful brand campaign, namely that the message fits people's perceptions of the products, that the message is unified and integrated into all communication and that the product can meet the expectation created by the campaign.
Regarding the Las Vegas stories campaign and its slogan, Vassiliadis said the brand succeeded because "this is what Las Vegas is and people think it is and it is what the resorts deliver."
The proof is the wide acceptance and use of the campaign's tagline in the country's popular culture, following such noteworthy predecessors as Nike shoe's "Just Do It" and the Wendy's restaurant chain's "Where's The Beef?"
Brandweek, one of the premiere weekly publications about the marketing industry, selected the campaign for its top award based on its impact not only on consumers, but the society as a whole.
"To be recognized as the [best] brand marketer is like going to the Academy Awards and being picked as Best Picture," says LVCVA president and CEO Rossi Ralenkotter. "This has been the most successful destination campaign that Las Vegas has ever had and it probably will be the best in history because it permeates the culture. We really did connect with the campaign and [express] the essence of Las Vegas to customers."
The win puts the pressure on the next group in the "Las Vegas Stories" series, expected to go into production by late fall and to hit the market in spring. While the upcoming batch will merely offer variations on the theme, Vassiliadis said he doesn't believe the concept will become depleted very soon and might extend another two or three segments.
To ensure that, the LVCVA is currently checking the freshness of the campaign in seven key markets.
"I think there is more [life in it], but how much more, I don't know," he says. "When it becomes ho-hum, we'll know it and we'll be out before we reach that. I don't relish that day. But no one around seems to be worried that we won't come up with something else."
The reason is that the campaign, along with others, have rocketed the Las Vegas marketing industry into national prominence. While that means that people who have worked on the "What happens here, stays here" campaign have been poached by large agencies on the two coasts and elsewhere, including the progenitors of the slogan, copywriters Jeff Candido and Jason Hoff, the industry here has been able to make the flow two-way based on the reputation gained from the work.
"We have gotten, in the last four to five years, tremendous opportunities to get new talent," he says. "Ten years ago, [talent from] Chicago and New York wouldn't even consider coming to Las Vegas. Up until recently, Las Vegas was a second or even third tier market. We're not Los Angeles, Chicago or New York, but we're competing with Boston and Atlanta now."
stevenm@lvpress.com 702-871-6780 x340

- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 8:10 PM