Reno billboard takes jab at Vegas

The Carson Valley Inn, located in the small Northern Nevada town of Minden, is minuscule by the standards of Las Vegas and the Strip.

But with one billboard, the hotel-casino has become a talk of the town in Reno, with a pointed jab at Las Vegas.

The billboard, on U.S. 395 between Reno and Carson City, pictures a panoramic view of the snow-topped Sierra Nevada mountains overlooking a pond. The challenge: "Build this, Las Vegas."

"I cannot tell you how many people have called me, stopped me in town, told me, 'That billboard is so cool,' " said Bill Henderson, director of sales and marketing at the Carson Valley Inn. "It's a campaign to create a little attitude on our part."

Reno advertising firm GustinCurtis came up with the idea. One of the firm's partners, Dan Gustin, is the long-time voice of the University of Nevada-Reno Wolfpack, a rival to UNLV.

Mark Curtis, Gustin's partner in the firm, said school rivalry didn't play a part in cooking up the idea for the ad, but said the idea did tap into a rivalry between Reno and Las Vegas.

"Reno has been struggling with its identity while Las Vegas takes off," Curtis said. "In a few words and a visual, we've said, 'This is why we like it here.' We still live in the most beautiful place in the world.

"We can have some fun with the biggest, baddest place on Earth."

Henderson said the ad has been drawing attention and business to the Carson Valley Inn, a 230-room hotel-motor lodge with a 550-slot casino. It's working so well that a second billboard will soon go up near Gardnerville, about 45 miles south of Reno.

"(Las Vegas) is the most unbelievable town in the world, but they'll never build the Sierra Nevada range," Henderson said. "How long will we leave the billboard up? Until they build it."

No offense taken, said a spokeswoman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. But she noted Las Vegas' rivals to the north just might be forgetting such local attractions as Mount Charleston, Red Rock Canyon and Lake Mead.

"They're capitalizing on the attractions of the natural beauty up there, and that's one of the strong selling points of Northern Nevada," said Richelle Thomson. "It sounds like very good marketing.

"But Las Vegas, in our defense, does have a lot of terrific natural beauty around here, as well as a lot of neon around the Strip."

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