Number 59: June 30, 2004

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This week in Katydid:

• Only Vegas Not So Salacious
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Only Vegas Not So Salacious
Marketing for cities begins the moment they sign their charters and select a motto. Currently several cities vie for the titles of "The City that Never Sleeps" or the "The City of Lights." It might take a poet such as Carl Sandburg to give you the "City of Big Shoulders" (for Chicago) or a committee might apply for something oddly specific such as the "Carpet Capital of the World" (for Dalton, Georgia).

Recently the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation launched a new campaign for Philadelphia ("The City of Brotherly Love," "The City That Loves You Back") targeted for gay tourists. The campaign's slogan is, "Get your history straight and your nightlife gay."

While this campaign is laudable for being the first national campaign for a destination that is targeted to a gay audience, it's also notable for its lack of poetry. The slogan is straining to be clever and the web site lists a range of entertainments that seem either condescending or naïve: nightclubs, shopping, gyms, theatres, and gay-themed events. It seems that the focus is mainly on the nightlife and less on the history:

"You can dance 'til dawn at bars and clubs in Washington Square West (Wash West), the city's main gay neighborhood; attend all manner of concerts and theater performances on the Avenue of the Arts; enjoy Old City's First Friday gallery openings; hang out in a cafe, and hear a singer/songwriter perform in an intimate venue - or combine some or all of the above."

The target audience may not know whether to be flattered or insulted. While some of the residents complained about how this campaign might affect the city's image, the controversy has been short-lived.

Similarly, the residents of other cities struggle with the dissonance between how they view themselves and how others view them.

During the first week of June, the New York Times ran a series of articles on Las Vegas, which I read with some interest as I was born there and lived there until the age of twenty-seven. The series, "American Dreamers: The Lure of Las Vegas," reported on the issues facing one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation. (I'd say the fastest, but the statistics change so fast I'd be wrong the moment this was published.)

While, the editorial focus seemed to be that Vegas is unique because of its gambling and salacious nightlife, the problems belong to any growing urban environment: crime and drugs among youth, overcrowded schools, rising housing costs, poverty, etc. Essentially, the theme was the residents of Las Vegas are selling a precious part of themselves in order to buy a down payment on the American dream - an installment plan that will never end. I'd have to say that Las Vegans are hardly on their own in that pursuit. Nor is it solely to shake their heads in disdain that millions of visitors from all over the world descend upon the "Jewel in the Desert."

The latest campaign for Las Vegas taps into something universal with "What happens here, stays here." The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) continued with their longstanding advertising agency, R&R Partners, to create the "Only Vegas" campaign and its evocative slogan written by Jeff Candido and Jason Hoff.

The campaign has been highly successful. Steve Friess writes in an article recently printed in the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune,

"A USA Today survey named the campaign the ''most effective'' of 2003, and the trade publication Advertising Age termed it ''a cultural phenomenon.'' One of the nation's biggest ad firms, BBD&O, hired Hoff this month from the Las Vegas firm of R&R Partners. And Michael Belch and George Belch, coauthors of ''Advertising and Promotion,'' plan to use the phrase as a case study in the next edition of their textbook."

In my view, what makes it so successful is that the slogan is set in the proper context. After a couple of early missteps, the television commercials have hit the tone perfectly by showing the inner struggle of the main characters. You are left wondering what they seem so embarrassed to reveal. The details are left to your imagination.

The campaign gives the visitor permission to be naughty, which may mean nothing more than staying up until three in the morning. The slogan is then a promise of confidentiality and the campaign will remain successful as long as the advertisements never break that trust and reveal the seamy secrets of its protagonists.

In fact, the details do not have to be sinful, which helps the campaign appeal to a much broader audience than the previous campaign, "Vegas Calling," which had a personification of the city calling on tourists ready to escape, "Dullsville."

Las Vegas is a schizophrenic city. Frommer's city guide states "Las Vegas (Sin City) has more churches per capita than any other city in America." That fact, oft repeated by Las Vegans may be as mythical as stories of the city's mob past. (Though my Grandmother loved to say that the city ran better under Mafia control, "At least a woman was safe on the streets.") Outside the Strip, Las Vegas looks like many other cities, except you can always make change for the Laundromat, and you can gamble on your way out of the 7-11.

Las Vegas has more in common with the City of Big Shoulders than the thousands of Chicago residents that make Vegas their winter home. Gaming and other adult entertainments are the industry of Vegas. Nearly everyone works for that industry. The dealers, housekeepers, servers, and all the rest are stagehands for a play in which the tourist is the star. Las Vegas is not Sin City; it sells the illusion of sin.

While some local politicians strive to legitimize the image of Vegas as a family destination, the image is just too strong. They should let it alone because most of us know that Vegas is a straw man for deeper issues. The sinful don't have to go anywhere to indulge themselves. Most who go to Vegas are just playing a role. The true promise behind, "What happens here, stays here," may be that Vegas won't tell anyone just how tame your weekend really was. We'll just smile, wink, and let everyone wonder.

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Kevin Troy Darling

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