Analysis: Was R&R politically juiced or simply best pick for LVCVA job?

By Richard N. Velotta

Friday, April 24, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Billy Vassiliadis has probably presented hundreds of pitches in his career, but none may have been as important as the one he gave last week.

After a little more than an hour and a half, Vassiliadis and R&R Partners, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s advertising and marketing consultant, had the board’s unanimous vote and Mesquite Mayor Susan Holecheck channeling Renee Zellweger when she told Vassiliadis and the crowd attending the meeting, “You had me from hello.”

Although R&R’s presentation was important to the company, it was equally crucial to Las Vegas tourism.

With R&R’s most recent five-year contract with the authority coming to an end June 30, the board had to make a decision on whether to extend the contract or issue a request for proposals from other ad and PR agencies.

Even the cagiest gambler wouldn’t have put any money on the long shot that R&R wouldn’t get the deal. And Vassiliadis really did have the board at hello.

R&R had history and experience on its side. Vassiliadis mixed video clips with statistics and commentary to make his case, and when he was done, the only drama left was over how long the contract extension would be and whether the deal would have option years attached to it.

When the vote was taken, 13 board members agreed to give R&R a three-year gig with a three-year extension option. That was a little shorter than the five years the company had gotten before, but the board and R&R are under more scrutiny than they were in the past.

Vassiliadis reminded board members about R&R’s most recent work.

He showed some video of the “freedom” campaign that told consumers Las Vegas represented the freedom to enjoy adult recreational pursuits and an election-year pitch to join the Freedom Party.

That campaign gave way to R&R’s — and Las Vegas’ — greatest marketing triumph: “What happens here, stays here.”

The introduction of the “what happens here, stays here” campaign cemented the city’s cultural icon status and Las Vegas became the second-most recognized brand in America behind Google and just ahead of the National Football League.

Maybe it was poetic justice that the NFL trailed Las Vegas in brand recognition because the league’s refusal to accept Las Vegas advertisements for the Super Bowl lifted the city to even greater heights. R&R was only too happy to encourage its media friends to pile on the NFL decision to keep Las Vegas off the airwaves.

In the meantime everyone from Billy Crystal to Jay Leno to Laura Bush to Angus T. Jones was using some variation of “What happens here, stays here,” in public, and Vassiliadis documented it all in video clips.

R&R developed a variety of innovative marketing tactics in tie-ins with Maxim magazine (a giant magazine cover in the desert), New York City’s Fashion Week (Las Vegas messages modeled in the Big Apple), Sports Illustrated (a coming-out party in Las Vegas celebrating the magazine’s 2009 swimsuit edition) and visible references in television from “American Idol” to “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.”

The company was quick to embrace new technology and how to use it to the city’s advantage, partnering with Google, YouTube and Twitter to sell the Las Vegas message.

Vassiliadis also recounted how R&R has been quick to respond to crises. The most visible was the response to 9/11. Las Vegas was first to deliver an ad message after 9/11 and it was no coincidence that Las Vegas was the first to recover from the economic turmoil that resulted from the attacks.

And there were other calamities — brownouts, California wildfires and mud slides, gasoline price spikes, construction closures on Interstate 15 and, of course, today’s epic recession. Vassiliadis pressed for the city’s current message encouraging an economically burdened public to take a break to come to Las Vegas and to do it now. He promised that a new batch of “What happens here, stays here” ads are on the way for the summer and the marketing message will pay special attention to property-specific big events in town including summer concerts, comedy acts and pool parties.

The shorter trip-booking window that has become a byproduct of the recession has forced R&R to be flexible enough to change messages on the fly. But Vassiliadis said at the core of the message will be the awareness that Las Vegas still represents a value proposition to tourists.

Vassiliadis didn’t want to be too specific about the future. After all, at that point in his presentation, a vote had yet to be taken. But he did share that he intends to encourage the authority to either offer or contract for a Web site that could book customers directly into hotel rooms which, after all, is its primary purpose.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, chairman of the LVCVA board, asked Vassiliadis if Las Vegas was sending mixed signals by offering to be an adult playground while being a serious convention destination.

“We can’t not be who we are,” Vassiliadis said before explaining that there are two distinct marketing messages to deliver and “we don’t give businesspeople in America enough credit” for recognizing the difference. It’s possible, he said, to tell people that Las Vegas is a premiere business-meeting destination at the same time we tell recession-weary visitors that they need a break here.

When the presentation was over, it came down to a decision of whether the board preferred R&R experience to a potential new agency’s innovation. In his cowboy way, board member Tom Collins of the Clark County Commission suggested that the board not “change horses in the middle of the stream.” And everybody agreed.

Maybe the more relevant debate would be over whether R&R got the contract extension because the company is juiced into the system or whether the agency is that good at what it does.

Critics such as the Nevada Policy Research Institute contend that R&R’s political connections may have more to do with keeping the contract than ability and on numerous occasions the organization has put a microscope on the authority and R&R procedures it questions.

I, for one, was looking forward to a serious discussion about whether it made sense to try a new ad agency or whether it was too dangerous to the Las Vegas destination to let that institutional knowledge and experience slip away at a time when the economy is reeling. The institute could have made its case that the authority spends too much money for advertising or any other opposing point of view on the ad contract, but it didn’t. Goodman sought public comment a couple of times during the R&R discussion, but he had no takers.

The institute can draft all the reports it wants on the transparency of the authority, but unless it engages in the public debate, those reports aren’t worth much.

Had there been more debate, the result may have been the same, but at least the public airing wouldn’t have been so one-sided and the public could have been assured that the decision was either brilliant or just a political payoff.

It also would have been nice to have a contrarian point of view from the board to debate the topic. Maybe someday we’ll see a representative from Las Vegas Sands, which shares many of the views of the institute, on the authority’s board to offer a different take on things. The company has some new management that could contribute to the process. The Las Vegas tourism industry deserves that.

Until that happens, we’ll continue to have unanimous votes on important topics and we’ll never know for sure whether what may have been the most important decision the board has made was the best decision it has ever made.

Southwest’s Boston schedule

Like its recently announced flight schedule to New York’s LaGuardia International Airport, Southwest Airlines’ Boston rollout is conservative and based on connections from Chicago and Baltimore.

Service to Logan International Airport begins Aug. 16 with five round trips each from Baltimore-Washington International Airport and Chicago’s Midway Airport.

Although there are no nonstop flights between Boston and Las Vegas yet, the airline is selling one-stop trips to and from McCarran International Airport.

Southwest is offering four one-stop options from Boston to Las Vegas and two two-stop trips on its schedule. From Las Vegas to Boston, there are three one-stop options.

The airline is starting up service with $99 one-way tickets, which means a round trip would go for $240 with all the taxes and fees.

US Airways and JetBlue offer nonstop flights between Las Vegas and Boston, but a midweek fare on those carriers is $359 round trip. Travelers can book one-stop round trips on Continental Airlines through Houston for $264.

Runway rehab completed

The $75 million runway rehabilitation that has taken one of McCarran International Airport’s four runways out of commission since Nov. 1 is complete just in time for the summer travel season.

Airport officials were scheduled to reopen Runway 25L/7R this week, giving the airport a sturdier 10,500-foot surface for takeoffs and landings parallel to airport’s longest runway.

Randall Walker, Clark County Aviation director, said contractors Las Vegas Paving worked night and day, sometimes in wet and windy weather and during a major December snowstorm, to get the work done a few days ahead of the projected completion date.

The project required 200,000 cubic yards of concrete and 57,500 cubic yards of new asphalt — the equivalent of the amount of material needed to build a 5-foot sidewalk between Las Vegas and Portland, Ore.

The construction resulted in occasional flight delays because it required some flights to use McCarran’s north-south runways that intersect with the east-west runways on some days when there were southwesterly winds.

The project was funded by $30.9 million in Federal Aviation Administration money with the rest financed by airport business operations.

Richard N. Velotta covers tourism for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. He can be reached at 259-4061 or at [email protected].