Las Vegas is only now beginning to emerge from the downturn in
the economy. For the fiscal year ended October 2012, Las Vegas
gambling revenues were up 7.4% to $2.1 billion compared with fiscal
2011, according to the Nevada State Gaming Commission. That's also
up from $1.8 billion in 2009, but short of the pre-downturn mark of
$2.3 billion in 2007.
Some 38.9 million people visited Las Vegas in 2011 according to
the visitors' authority; 2012 figures were available only through
October -- on par with the 39.1 million tourists who visited the
city in 2007.
Ad Age spoke with Rob Dondero, exec VP of R&R Partners and
the lead executive on the account, about the campaign.
This month is the 10th anniversary of "What Happens
Here, Stays Here." So is this Mr. LasVegasDotCom campaign replacing
that ?
Mr. Dondero: "What Happens Here" is not going
away. Adult freedom is the backbone of Las Vegas, and we will never
extract that from the brand. In fact, "What Happens Here" still
tests wildly popular with our core audience. We're going to spend
the next year two quarters ramping up the website, but we're going
to come back with some new "What Happens" stuff later this
year.
So what is the goal?
Mr. Dondero: We've been doing a lot of research
with our consumers and over the past 12 to eight months they've
been telling us, "'I want to go to Vegas but it's intimidating." We
call them "persuaders." People come to Las Vegas to gamble, to see
shows, to shop. But the casual traveler has to be persuaded, and
you have to make it easy for them.
How are they intimidated?
Mr. Dondero: Consumers were telling us the city
is so big, with so many things, that they were afraid of getting
out of control and not being able to plan their trip. They didn't
have up-to-date information, or were looking in different places
for it. They were intimidated by the trip. They said "If you could
give me one website on how to make an itinerary, how to plan my
trip, that would be a great asset." The genesis started there. And
then the hotels said it would be great to have a website where we
can bundle our assets from air, to travel to tickets to nightclub
information. … The destination has never had an e-commerce
site. That's the exciting thing for us. This is the first time
we've had e-commerce. We've always been such a strong entity on
branding.
What else did you run across in the
research?
Mr. Dondero: You will never take gaming away
from Las Vegas or the consumer. But we've done our best to promote
all the other things you can do. The hotels have invested monies in
nightclubs, dayclubs, shopping, restaurants for the foodies,
first-class shows, and this is what the consumer wants. They want
to eat where Mario Batali cooks, where Wolfgang Puck cooks.
What iterations did you go through before coming up with
Mr. LasVegasDotCom?
Mr. Dondero: We tested a number of different
ideas about driving people to the website. This campaign is not
about Las Vegas, per se. It's about getting people to go to the
website. We had a few creative ideas, and we had focus groups in
Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles and Dallas. We found that Mr. Las
Vegas broke through the clutter.
So is Las Vegas back from its economic
woes?
Mr. Dondero: I would say the city is making
steady improvement. It's not giant leaps like we might have seen in
the past. We're still fighting through some downturns. But we're 3%
to 4% on room occupancy, the average spend is up, the daily room
rate is up slightly … It's getting back there, yeah.
