LAS VEGAS: As an otherwise predictable Academy
Awards show came to a close last month, the host, Billy Crystal,
summed up the tame action with a mocking rebuke to the millions
of viewers.
''Remember,'' Crystal said, ''what happens at the Oscars stays
at the Oscars.''
Back in Las Vegas, Jeff Candido, a 28-year-old advertising
copywriter, turned and stared at his wife. When Candido's phone
started ringing moments later with congratulations, you might
have thought that he and cowriter Jason Hoff had won one of
the golden statuettes.
Eighteen months ago, Candido and Hoff penned a tagline for
the city of Las Vegas' new, risqu´e tourist campaign, ''What
Happens Here Stays Here.'' To Hoff, 26 years old, Crystal's
appropriation of it was ''surreal because it was so random,''
and proof positive that the campaign had coursed its way into
the popular lexicon in a way few ad slogans ever do.
It's not a new saying, to be sure. From military personnel
on leave to actors on location, people have followed this unspoken
rule, to avoid responsibility for or assuage guilt over untoward
behavior. But its connection to Sin City and its constant utterances
across the cultural landscape have advertising experts putting
this rendition of it in a league with Wendy's ''Where's the
beef?'' and Nike's Just do it.''
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 ?rms,
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.
''It's not a totally new phrase, but they're bringing it into
the forefront of public awareness in a new way,'' said George
Belch, chairman of the San Diego State University marketing
department.
''They're trying to generate some excitement and mystique about
the Vegas experience, and this does that perfectly.''
Figuring out beforehand whether an ad slogan is destined to
become a part of the vernacular is, in Vegas parlance, a crap
shoot. With the ''Where's the beef?'' ads, for instance, the
cranky delivery of pitchwoman Clara Peller made it funny. The
Democratic challenger, Walter F. Mondale, also lifted it to
question the substance of President Ronald Reagan's policies
in the 1984 race.
The ''What Happens Here Stays Here'' tag is the clincher for
a series of nationally aired TV ads that tell such uniquely
Vegas tales as that of the woman rushing from her quickie wedding
back to a conference. The ads ran, coincidentally, as television
shows from NBC's racy hit ''Las Vegas'' to Bravo's ''Celebrity
Poker'' were about to heighten awareness of Vegas anyway. Major
celebrity news out of Vegas helped the slogan along, including
Roy Horn's tiger injury, Michael Jackson's indictment, and Britney
Spears's 55-hour marriage. But on its own, within weeks of
the February 2003 ad debut, news anchors, late-night comedians,
TV sitcom characters, and even Vegas- bound flight attendants
were uttering the phrase. ''Saturday Night Live'' mocked the
ads in two skits during one recent episode.
Jay Leno has used the phrase at least six times, most recently
in noting that perhaps terrorists wouldn't attack the city because
they're after publicity, and, ''as you know, what happens in
Vegas stays in Vegas.'' Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, in a lighthearted
CNN debate with Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman about whose city
offers a better lifestyle, quipped, ''You know, Oscar, what
they say about Minneapolis: What happens here stays here.''
To R&R Partners owner Billy Vassiliadis, though, the big event
was former Education Secretary William Bennett's having become
embroiled in a scandal last spring about his gambling. After
a video of Bennett sitting at a Vegas slot machine hit the news,
Bennett griped to both Leno and NBC's Tim Russert: ''Apparently,
'what happens here stays here' applies to everyone but me.''
''It became this avalanche of people using it,'' Vassiliadis
said. ''I was on the airplane and instead of saying, 'Have a
good time,' the flight attendant said, 'And don't forget, what
happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.' ''
Belch said it's especially unusual that the campaign is so
successful because it markets a destination rather than a product
or a service. But Las Vegas spends $60 million a year to have
R&R Partners create and place the ads, a sum many times greater
than the promotional budgets of other cities and even most states.
Orlando, one of the few US cities that rival Las Vegas as
a tourist destination, spends about $11.5 million a year. Boston
spends less than $2 million, and does no TV advertising.
With all that money, R&R set Hoff, Candido, and several other
writers to the task of ?nding a new city slogan in summer 2002.
Vegas was on the brink of plunging back into its image as an
adult playground after a failed effort at rebranding itself
as a family destination. Hoff and Candido say they compared
their notes one day and noticed they both had a variation on
''What happens here stays here'' scribbled on their pads. The
playful television campaign R&R developed tell ambiguous vignettes
that suggest some sort of illicit activity but that leave it
to the viewer to decide what happened.
One shows a middle-age woman writing a postcard in Chinese,
then blotting out a line she didn't want folks at home to read.
''We knew we couldn't show a lot of what people do in Las
Vegas on prime-time TV, so the slogan lets them guess,'' Candido
said. Not everyone is enamored of the slogan.
Former Las Vegas mayor Jan Jones, now an executive of Harrah's
Entertainment Inc., voiced fear that it would characterize the
city ''as a place where people come to cheat and steal,'' although
she now says her concerns have been allayed after Vassiliadis
promised less racy spots.
Yellowpages.Com CEO Dane Madsen said that very image has hampered
his efforts to recruit top-level managers to his company, which
is based in the Vegas suburb of Henderson.
Religious conservatives in Las Vegas, too, are unhappy. One
church posted on its billboard: ''What happens in Vegas, God
knows about.'' And Lucille Lusk, president of Nevada Concerned
Citizens, said the slogan is offensive because it is not true.
The FBI occasionally has demanded hotel guest lists from Vegas
resorts, citing national security concerns, Lusk said. Goodman
bristled at the criticism.
''Anybody who wouldn't come to Vegas because they don't like
the slogan, I don't want them here,'' Goodman said. ''It's not
a place for little old biddies.''
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