It happened there, it stayed there, and as sales pitches go, it served Las Vegas well for the better part of a decade, wrapping the city up in a fantasy of uninhibited adult freedom where anything was possible and all of it was fun.
But as Billy Vassiliadis, CEO of R&R Partners, the advertising agency of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, put it, it was time to move on.
“What Happens Here, Stays Here” was officially retired on Grammys night last Sunday with the first of a planned series of glitzy TV commercials to promote a fantasy for a new decade: “What Happens Here Only Happens Here.”
“It was iconic, it was cultural, there was a feeling of connectivity,” Vassiliadis told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, speaking of the old slogan. “So we couldn’t walk away from it. But we had to contextualize it. We sort of feel we bridged the icon to today. We kept the essence of it.”
The commercial featured a series of star-studded walk-ons by the likes of Shania Twain, Christina Aguilera, Aerosmith and UFC fighter Francis Ngannou to talk about the unique experiences the town encompasses.
“It’s a tip of the hat to all the residencies that are here, which has become a really cool new thing,” Vassiliadis said.
To coincide with it, at 6 p.m. that same night, marquees up and down the Strip lit up with the new slogan for roughly an hour.
The spot is set to run until the end of March, to be followed by a second one designed to challenge viewers to take a Vegas plunge.
“It was a matter of driving impulse decision-making,” Vassiliadis explained.
Still to come is the social media blitz.
“You don’t launch (campaigns) the way you used to,” Vassiliadis said. “It’s not about the brand offering itself up on a TV commercial. The audiences want to be the ones that push things out, that own it, that influence their peers.”
To that end, Instagram traps will be set up across the Strip, Fremont Street and McCarran International Airport, urging visitors to snap and share photos of themselves with art installations that have the slogan plastered across their exterior.
The social media piece could also include a new “Las Vegas” hashtag that comes with a mini-icon of the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign along with a Las Vegas emoji that will make the city only the second destination in the world with its own emoji, behind Tokyo.
R&R also is looking into ways to integrate “What Happens Here Only Happens Here” into airline experiences through partnerships with carriers like Frontier and Allegiant. Another partnership with Pantone Color Institute is set to unveil a set of “Neon Vegas” colors with names based on the new slogan.
The idea is to invest the new concept with a life of its own, to make it something more than just a TV spot or words on a billboard, to implant it into the collective consciousness to make it into something like … well, like “What Happens Here Stays Here”.
“It’s so wired into the city,” Vassiliadis acknowledged. “I don’t think people are going to stop saying it.”
