REVISED PAGES An Introduction to Integrated …

1 1 Part Five Developing the Integrated Marketing Communications ProgramChapter examine the marketing communication func-tion and the growing importance of advertisingand other promotional elements in the market-ing programs of domestic and introduce the concept of integratedmarketing communications (IMC) and considerhow it has examine reasons for the increasingimportance of the IMC perspective in planningand executing advertising and promotional introduce the various elements of the promo-tional mix and consider their roles in an IMC examine how various marketing and promo-tional elements must be coordinated to commu-nicate introduce a model of the IMC planningprocess and examine the steps in developing amarketing communications PAGESAn Introduction to IntegratedMarketing 10/28/05 3:11 PM Page 2 Las Vegas is one of the most popular destinationsin the world.

2 More than 37 million people visit theentertainment and gambling mecca each yearincluding tourists from around the globe, businesspeople attending trade shows and conventions,and weekend visitors who come for three days ofpartying. The daunting task of filling the city snearly 130,000 hotel rooms each night andattracting new, as well as repeat visitors to the citylies primarily with the Las Vegas Convention andVisitors Authority (LVCVA), which representshotels, county, municipal, and private businessassociation interests in the area. And for the past25 years the LVCVA has worked closely with theadvertising agency R & R Partners to help in themarketing of the city and to guide the brandingof Las Vegas through its many most people are aware of Las Vegas andits gaming heritage, the LVCVA and R & R Part-ners have been constantly challenged to positionthe city as a vibrant and contemporary player inthe resort industry.

3 Once known mainly for 24-hour gambling, all-you-can-eat buffets, andlounge shows, the new Las Vegas has evolvedinto a world-class shopping, dining, and enter-tainment destination. However, the city has alsobeen facing greater competition as gamblingand shows are now readily available in AtlanticCity as well as in a myriad of riverboat and NativeAmerican gaming casinos that are only a fewhours drive or less from hundreds of cities acrossthe country. Travelers and conventioneers inter-ested in great dining and shopping could findthese attractions in a variety of cities such as SanFrancisco, New Orleans, or New York. In early 2000, Billy Vassiliadias, the CEO of R & RPartners and Rossi Ralenkotter, the LVCVA presi-dent and CEO, reviewed agency research studiesand came to the same conclusion.

4 Las Vegas waslosing its exclusivity, and the branding campaignfor the city lacked a unifying idea that could breakthrough all the clutter. They felt that they haddone a good job of educating consumers aboutthe new megaresorts and other attractions thathad been built and helped transform Vegas froma gaming destination to an international gate-way. However, the challenge was to find a unifiedway of marketing the city that would create aunique brand identity for Vegas that would res-onate with and motivate a wide range of people. R & R Partners approached the challenge bygoing back to basics and talking to agency conducted qualitative account plan-ning expeditions to Los Angeles, Las Vegas s pri-mary feeder market, as well as major cities such asGESREVISED PAGESWhat Happens in Las Vegas,Stays in Las 10/28/05 3:11 PM Page 3 New York, Dallas, Miami, and Chicago.

5 The researchrevealed that the biggest differentiator for LasVegas was not the lavish hotels, casinos, restaurants,and night clubs. Vassiliadias noted that The prod-uct, whether it was great dining or great properties,was this great canvas on which they paint theirexperience and that was truly the differentiator. From focus groups and other research, R & R learnedthat people love to come to Las Vegas to cut loose,have fun, and do things they wouldn t do backhome from overindulging in bars, restaurants, andcasinos to staying out all night, everyone s expecta-tions and experience is different. The first campaign that R & R developed to appealto these desires was called the Las Vegas Freedomparty, which consisted of a series of spots encourag-ing people to escape the drudgery of everyday lifeand start their own party with a trip to Las other campaign themes followed, including What you want, when you want and Open 24hours.

6 While these campaigns circled and nibbledat the edges of the big idea, the real breakthroughcame in 2003 when two of the agency s copywriterscame up with the now famous tagline, What hap-pens here, stays here. This was a derivative of thetraveling salesman s mantra, What happens on theroad, stays on the road. The next step was to decidehow this slogan could be Integrated with the OnlyVegas umbrella theme that was being used to pitchconvention and business travel. R & R s creative department developed a series ofcommercials that used provocative Only in Vegas stories. The ads show situations that are unlikely tohappen elsewhere and in ways that are open to sev-eral interpretations, from the mildly hedonistic to thedownright sinful. Each commercial implies that some-thing has happened to the character in Las Vegasthat he or she may or may not want friends or familyback home to know about.

7 However, the commer-cials let the viewer project his or her own fantasyabout Las Vegas and fill in the blanks. The story lineshave included a nervous woman who blots outembarrassing portions of a postcard before mailingit; a newlywed who leaves her new husband in awedding chapel to rush back to her convention; anda guy who requests a wake-up call to his cell phonebecause he doesn t know where he will be sleeping. The first phase of the campaign began in January2003 with a healthy dose of free publicity when theNational Football League rejected the LVCVA s bidto buy a spot on the Super Bowl on the groundsthat it did not want to be associated with there, the edgy, sexy commercials took off andthe campaign has become one of the most popularon television.

8 USA TODAY s consumer weekly AdTrack survey ranked the ads as the most effectivecampaign of the year in 2003. The campaigntagline, What happens here, stays here, hasachieved a pop culture status on par with Wendy sclassic Where s the beef? and Budweiser s Whas-sup? The line has been used by Billy Crystal to closethe Oscar s, in Jay Leno monologues, and was evenused by First Lady Laura Bush as a retort to Leno squestion about whether she saw the Chippendaledancers during a campaign visit to & R Partners has leveraged the popular commer-cials into a fully Integrated campaign that hasincluded guerrilla marketing efforts around theOscar and Grammy Awards, sponsorships, and publicrelations activities that have produced feature storiesin a variety of popular media including CNN, NationalPublic Radio, USA TODAY,the New York Times,andWall Street Journalas well as a cover story in Timemagazine.

9 The campaign has also been recognizedby the advertising and marketing industry as BillyVassiliadias and Rossi Ralenkotter shared the 2004 Grand Marketer of the Year award, which is given byBrandWeekmagazine. However, most important tothe LVCVA is the impact the campaign has had on thenumber of visitors to the city. In 2004, Las Vegashosted a record-breaking million visitors and thehotel occupancy rate averaged 89 percent. It appearsthat a lot is happening in Vegas, : Mike Beirne, Playing for keeps, Brandweek,October11, 2004, pp. M6 11; Rich Thomaselli, Las Vegas ad slogantakes on life of its own, Advertising Age,March 8, 2004, p. 10/28/05 3:11 PM Page 4 The opening vignette illustrateshow the roles of advertising andother forms of promotion arechanging in the modern world ofmarketing.

10 In the past, marketerssuch as the Las Vegas Conventionand Visitors Authority (LVCVA)relied primarily on media advertis-ing to tourists, travel agents, andconvention planners to attract visi-tors to the city. However, todaymany companies are taking a dif-ferent approach in developing theirmarketing communication pro-grams. They integrate their adver-tising efforts with a variety of othercommunication tools such as web-sites on the Internet, direct market-ing, sales promotion, publicity andpublic relations, entertainment marketing, and sponsorship of events. These companiesrecognize that there are many ways to reach their current and prospective customers andbring them into contact with their products and services. They also know that it isbecoming increasingly difficult to reach their target audiences and communicate effec-tively with them.