INSIDE THE AD AGENCY HELPING VEGAS MOURN -- AND PLOT ITS COMEBACK
E..J. Schultz. Published on October 11, 2017
Since 2003, Las Vegas has been defined by a five-word tagline encapsulating the mischievous mystique of the nation's adult playground: "What Happens Here Stays Here." But within minutes of hearing about the mass shooting that terrorized the city on Oct. 1, the man who runs the ad agency behind the slogan knew it had to come down. Immediately.
It was "completely inappropriate," says Billy Vassiliadis, CEO of R&R Partners, the longtime agency for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. So he and more than a dozen agency staffers rushed to the agency's suburban Las Vegas office that Sunday night, pulling the campaign and formulating a more appropriate message to capture the city's grief and resolve.
The quick media, advertising and PR moves made by the agency by no means compare to the heroic actions taken by police officers and first responders who jumped into harm's way amid what turned out to be the worst mass-shooting in modern U.S history. But from a business perspective, the agency's actions spared the city's tourism industry from potential embarrassment and created emotional bonds bridging locals and the millions of tourists who fuel the Vegas economy.
What will happen to 'What Happens?'
The campaign, called "VegasStrong," borrows the same hashtag used by other disaster-stricken cities, starting with the "BostonStrong" moniker that spread in the wake of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Last year, "OrlandoStrong" was popularized after the nightclub shooting.
It is sadly telling that mass shootings happen so frequently in this country that cities are essentially recirculating recovery campaign slogans. R&R Partners took its cues from social media content that began appearing almost immediately after news of the Vegas shooting broke.
"At one point I said 'I'd like to come up with something unique to us' and my social team said there is so much content out there we would lose if we [did]," Vassiliadis said in an interview this week from R&R Partners' Vegas office, which sits in a quiet suburb about 20 minutes from the Strip.
On Monday afternoon, more than a dozen staffers huddled in an agency conference room that has served as a command center. From there they have worked long hours, plotting messaging and responding to incorrect information that spread online, especially in the first few hours after the shooting. "I mean there was just rumors and stuff flying like crazy," Vassiliadis says, including speculation that there was more than one shooter.
"And so we were debunking those."
As for the "What Happens Here" campaign, he promised that "it will be back when it's appropriate, when we think the tone is right. Not too long, a couple months probably."
The new campaign started with a humble message that the casinos and hotels lining the Vegas strip are still flashing on their marquees. Against a black backdrop, it reads: "We've been there for you during the good times. Thank you for being there for us now."
Arnie DiGeorge, the agency's executive creative director, said the copy was inspired by the fact that "people have seen us at our best and the've had a great time with us and they love us." Now, "they are showing us that kind of love."
On the Wednesday after the shooting, the first #VegasStrong video debuted. It features a voiceover by Las Vegas native Andre Agassi and pays tribute to first responders, medics and surgeons, police and local businesses that rushed to pitch in the wake of the shooting. The spot aired during "Thursday Night Football" on CBS.
The campaign has been amplified by donated media. Clear Channel donated over 1,000 outdoor billboards across the country. National Cinemedia gave theater ad space, according to R&R Partners. Ads are also running in Times Square, including copy stating "What Happens Here Will Not Stop Us," via a donation from out-of-home ad company Branded Cities.
On Tuesday of this week, R&R Partners released new video (at top) based on user-generated social media content, including one woman pledging that "No one and nothing will stop me from going to Vegas."
It's personal
"We just want to make sure that the city comes out of this and gets back to some sort of normal," DiGeorge says. "It's less of a marketing thing and more of a just trying to have everybody understand." He adds: "People are saying such great things, and saying how they are coming back. So instead of us saying it, we are going to let the public say it."
For the agency, the campaign is personal. DiGeorge is a lifelong Vegas resident, whose dad was a craps dealer. Vassiliadis, 61, known around town as "Billy V," was born in Greece, raised in Chicago, came to Vegas for college and hasn't left since. He started working at R&R in 1983, and with another partner bought the agency in 1994 from founder Sig Rogich. The agency now has nine officers in cities including Los Angeles and Mexico City but its heartbeat is in Vegas. Vassiliadis, who worked for Barack Obama's presidential campaign in Nevada, made the Las Vegas Review Journal's 2011 "Who's got the juice" list of local residents with clout.
The agency does pro bono work for the Vegas police department and counts a local ambulance service as a client. "We knew the officers who were responding to the scene," Vassiliadis says. "We are just staked personally. These are our friends. These are our family."
Vassiliadis suspects that some visitors might stay away for a short period of time because "people by religious upbringing, by culture, or just by instinct [and] intuition respect what that they believe to be some grieving period. It could be a week. It could be 10 days." He adds: "I don't think we are going to be super down, but I think there is going to be a little bit of a softening."
'We love it here'
Last year Vegas drew nearly 43 million visitors, setting a record, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Rossi Ralenkotter, CEO of the authority, did not share cancellation figures for the days after the shooting but said "it hasn't been very many."
Previously planned big conventions have proceeded as normal, including the National Beer Wholesalers Association, which packed Caesar's Palace this week with some 4,000 beer distributors and suppliers from across the country for its annual convention and trade show. The group dimmed the lights and observed a moment of silence when it kicked off formal proceedings on Monday morning. But beyond that, it was business as usual. On Sunday night, the group hosted an '80s-themed poolside party filled with food, music, and of course, beer.
Along the Strip, tourists seem mostly unfazed, including Tim Mowler of Germany, who was making his first trip to Vegas for four-days as part of a U.S. swing. "It's quite impressive," he said of Vegas after starring at the iconic roaring fountains in front of the Bellagio. He was confident that security measures would be increased, he said, although he suggested that the U.S. tighten its gun laws.
Crystal McDonald of Missouri was not deterred either. She and a group of friends were staying the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, the same property from which gunman Stephen Paddock fired from down into the country music festival across the street.
The windows from where he shot were still visible a week after the shooting. They had coverings meant to blend in with the goldish color of the rest of the property, but they still drew upward gazes from a gaggle of tourists below who snapped photos. The sidewalk outside the hotel was oddly quiet for Vegas standards, and a steady stream of people visited a makeshift memorial at a nearby intersection covered with candles, stuffed animals and flowers.
McDonald booked her reservation two months ago for her third trip to Vegas in 10 months. "We love it here," she said. "Nothing would keep us from here."
E..J. Schultz. Published on October 11, 2017
Since 2003, Las Vegas has been defined by a five-word tagline encapsulating the mischievous mystique of the nation's adult playground: "What Happens Here Stays Here." But within minutes of hearing about the mass shooting that terrorized the city on Oct. 1, the man who runs the ad agency behind the slogan knew it had to come down. Immediately.
It was "completely inappropriate," says Billy Vassiliadis, CEO of R&R Partners, the longtime agency for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. So he and more than a dozen agency staffers rushed to the agency's suburban Las Vegas office that Sunday night, pulling the campaign and formulating a more appropriate message to capture the city's grief and resolve.
The quick media, advertising and PR moves made by the agency by no means compare to the heroic actions taken by police officers and first responders who jumped into harm's way amid what turned out to be the worst mass-shooting in modern U.S history. But from a business perspective, the agency's actions spared the city's tourism industry from potential embarrassment and created emotional bonds bridging locals and the millions of tourists who fuel the Vegas economy.
What will happen to 'What Happens?'
The campaign, called "VegasStrong," borrows the same hashtag used by other disaster-stricken cities, starting with the "BostonStrong" moniker that spread in the wake of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Last year, "OrlandoStrong" was popularized after the nightclub shooting.
It is sadly telling that mass shootings happen so frequently in this country that cities are essentially recirculating recovery campaign slogans. R&R Partners took its cues from social media content that began appearing almost immediately after news of the Vegas shooting broke.
"At one point I said 'I'd like to come up with something unique to us' and my social team said there is so much content out there we would lose if we [did]," Vassiliadis said in an interview this week from R&R Partners' Vegas office, which sits in a quiet suburb about 20 minutes from the Strip.
On Monday afternoon, more than a dozen staffers huddled in an agency conference room that has served as a command center. From there they have worked long hours, plotting messaging and responding to incorrect information that spread online, especially in the first few hours after the shooting. "I mean there was just rumors and stuff flying like crazy," Vassiliadis says, including speculation that there was more than one shooter.
"And so we were debunking those."
As for the "What Happens Here" campaign, he promised that "it will be back when it's appropriate, when we think the tone is right. Not too long, a couple months probably."
The new campaign started with a humble message that the casinos and hotels lining the Vegas strip are still flashing on their marquees. Against a black backdrop, it reads: "We've been there for you during the good times. Thank you for being there for us now."
Arnie DiGeorge, the agency's executive creative director, said the copy was inspired by the fact that "people have seen us at our best and the've had a great time with us and they love us." Now, "they are showing us that kind of love."
On the Wednesday after the shooting, the first #VegasStrong video debuted. It features a voiceover by Las Vegas native Andre Agassi and pays tribute to first responders, medics and surgeons, police and local businesses that rushed to pitch in the wake of the shooting. The spot aired during "Thursday Night Football" on CBS.
The campaign has been amplified by donated media. Clear Channel donated over 1,000 outdoor billboards across the country. National Cinemedia gave theater ad space, according to R&R Partners. Ads are also running in Times Square, including copy stating "What Happens Here Will Not Stop Us," via a donation from out-of-home ad company Branded Cities.
On Tuesday of this week, R&R Partners released new video (at top) based on user-generated social media content, including one woman pledging that "No one and nothing will stop me from going to Vegas."
It's personal
"We just want to make sure that the city comes out of this and gets back to some sort of normal," DiGeorge says. "It's less of a marketing thing and more of a just trying to have everybody understand." He adds: "People are saying such great things, and saying how they are coming back. So instead of us saying it, we are going to let the public say it."
For the agency, the campaign is personal. DiGeorge is a lifelong Vegas resident, whose dad was a craps dealer. Vassiliadis, 61, known around town as "Billy V," was born in Greece, raised in Chicago, came to Vegas for college and hasn't left since. He started working at R&R in 1983, and with another partner bought the agency in 1994 from founder Sig Rogich. The agency now has nine officers in cities including Los Angeles and Mexico City but its heartbeat is in Vegas. Vassiliadis, who worked for Barack Obama's presidential campaign in Nevada, made the Las Vegas Review Journal's 2011 "Who's got the juice" list of local residents with clout.
The agency does pro bono work for the Vegas police department and counts a local ambulance service as a client. "We knew the officers who were responding to the scene," Vassiliadis says. "We are just staked personally. These are our friends. These are our family."
Vassiliadis suspects that some visitors might stay away for a short period of time because "people by religious upbringing, by culture, or just by instinct [and] intuition respect what that they believe to be some grieving period. It could be a week. It could be 10 days." He adds: "I don't think we are going to be super down, but I think there is going to be a little bit of a softening."
'We love it here'
Last year Vegas drew nearly 43 million visitors, setting a record, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Rossi Ralenkotter, CEO of the authority, did not share cancellation figures for the days after the shooting but said "it hasn't been very many."
Previously planned big conventions have proceeded as normal, including the National Beer Wholesalers Association, which packed Caesar's Palace this week with some 4,000 beer distributors and suppliers from across the country for its annual convention and trade show. The group dimmed the lights and observed a moment of silence when it kicked off formal proceedings on Monday morning. But beyond that, it was business as usual. On Sunday night, the group hosted an '80s-themed poolside party filled with food, music, and of course, beer.
Along the Strip, tourists seem mostly unfazed, including Tim Mowler of Germany, who was making his first trip to Vegas for four-days as part of a U.S. swing. "It's quite impressive," he said of Vegas after starring at the iconic roaring fountains in front of the Bellagio. He was confident that security measures would be increased, he said, although he suggested that the U.S. tighten its gun laws.
Crystal McDonald of Missouri was not deterred either. She and a group of friends were staying the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, the same property from which gunman Stephen Paddock fired from down into the country music festival across the street.
The windows from where he shot were still visible a week after the shooting. They had coverings meant to blend in with the goldish color of the rest of the property, but they still drew upward gazes from a gaggle of tourists below who snapped photos. The sidewalk outside the hotel was oddly quiet for Vegas standards, and a steady stream of people visited a makeshift memorial at a nearby intersection covered with candles, stuffed animals and flowers.
McDonald booked her reservation two months ago for her third trip to Vegas in 10 months. "We love it here," she said. "Nothing would keep us from here."
especially since we keep getting different stories from las vegas police on timeline and when the security guard got shot. i mean come on it takes a week to get it straight that the guard got shot before he started shooting into the concert crowd? This stinks of something. incompetence? i don't know. Now ten days later i am hearing for the first time a maintenance worker was up there and called in that shots were fired in the hallway and for Mandalay to call the police. Again this was before the guy started shooting at the concert people. Smells bad to me.
You have it right on the money. Is it of utmost importance that every second
is accounted for? The guy was mentally disturbed. That's all you need to know.
Critics are at their best to point out the barn door is open once a horse gets
out. Every casino will adopt new policies and they will all be a waste of time.
The only way to stop things like this from happening is if you get lucky.
9/11 wasn't prevented and in retrospect there where signs everywhere. The guy
was a whale and Vegas loves whales. There were no signs he was a nut job.
It's time to move on.
Agreed, not sure what people really want the media to cover so closely here? Some loon went into 1st person shooter video game mode at a concert.
Even if we find his motive? What good does that do?
The main reason he did it was because he was crazy. The next guy who does this will also be crazy, he'll just be crazy for different reasons.
Really? There's not really an evidence of that though. Searching his home and finding all those weapons and that they were all his weapon purchased by him, really cuts the notion that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and used as a scapegoat. A lot of people would have to be on a cover up up like this.
Some really bad conspiracy website is stating that he has been brainwashed and mind controlled a few years ago. All to cause a massacre with weapons to push a gun ban during supposedly Hillary presidency in 2017. Hence his mindlessly purchasing tons and tons of weapons to prove the point about how easy it is to get so many, cause so much damage, etc...
Was way out there, if mind control were possible, it might hold some merit.
Why not, just posting a theory I heard since it was on this topic. Maybe someone (Not you) might find it interesting, and want to check into it.
Sorry oh great one, for I posted something that was on the topic, but from a non-credible source, and felt I would put my OPINION on if its a good or bad website.... since it is a THEORY.
Speaking of which... since this is a sports wagering forum... no one should post any plays right? Since they are all "Theories" per say?
Anyways... If you are posting asking someone why they are posting on the topic discussed, why are you posting about them posting what they are posting, when you are posting asking them why they are even posting at all on the topic which was discussed in the original title of the thread and the subsequent postings above the said mentioned post which you are questioning the poster about posting.
BTW, Hi John!!
