Las Vegas was not ready to completely say goodbye to a tourism-marketing
slogan that has become an indelible part of pop culture.
“What happens here, only happens here” is the “new” slogan,
unveiled in a 60-second commercial on CBS’s Grammy Awards telecast on Sunday
night. The ad features Shania Twain, Christina Aguilera, Aerosmith and others
with a glittering selection of Vegas landmarks and spectacles.
The catchphrase replaces “What happens here, stays here,”
introduced in 2003 and widely considered to be one of most effective
advertising campaigns in history.
“It tells you how successful the previous one was. This
is an offshoot of it,” said Michael Green, professor of history at the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “Do you call it a new slogan when it includes
‘what happens here’? They’re using it as a jumping off point.”
The phrase “what happens here” is so closely associated with
the destination that the words “Las Vegas” don’t even need to be a part of it,
Green says.
He said the offshoot slogan “is good way to keep some of the
old and bring in some of the new.”
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill told
the Las Vegas Review-Journal earlier this month that the new slogan reflects
how Las Vegas is transitioning into a sports and entertainment capital.
“We think it’ll have literal resonance as well as emotional
resonance as ‘What happens here, stays here,’” Hill said. “We don’t want our
brand promise to be aspirational. We want it to be real. We want it to be
authentic. We want people to think, ‘Yep, that is exactly how we feel about
that,’ and we think it captures that.”
Billy Vassiliadis, CEO of R&R Partners, the LVCVA’s
advertising consultant that devised both campaigns, told the Review-Journal
that the new slogan keeps the “essence” of the old one while bridging to
today’s market.
“It was iconic, it was cultural … there was a feeling of
connectivity,” Vassiliadis said. “So we couldn’t walk away from it, but we had
to contextualize it.”
Even the most successful ads have a shelf life, Green says.
“There is a point at which somebody is going to look at this and say you’ve
been doing this for 16, 17 years. Isn’t it about time you tried something new?”