Recently the Nevada Development Authority ran an advertising campaign designed to entice California businesses to relocate from The Golden State to the lower taxed, less regulated Silver State.
The ad campaign formally is entitled “Kiss Your Assets Goodbye” and compares California lawmakers to monkeys. (Rumor has it the monkeys are considering suing for defamation.)
California assemblyman Jose Solorio was so offended that he has funded (okay, the folks who contributed to his campaign fund have funded) a retaliatory campaign that declares:
“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what happens in California makes the world go ’round.”
Making your competition’s wildly successful slogan the centerpiece of your own campaign is what we in the advertising business call “stupid.”
Want to know why Las Vegas has stuck with that slogan for years? Because it works. It embodies the Vegas brand, which people respond to and remember.
Few readers are likely to remember that prior to the “stays in Vegas” campaign, the city spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to reposition itself as a “family destination.”
For some reason, tourists didn’t buy into the “strippers + gambling = fun for the whole family” approach. Vegas returned to the image it had earned for decades: a place where people go to enjoy pleasures of which they might not partake at home.
The slogan reflects the image that attracts visitors and it’s catchy. It’s become a cultural catch phrase.
Mr. Solorio, let me explain this in simple terms:
1. Las Vegas spends millions of dollars promoting that slogan.
2. The slogan works for Las Vegas (and, by extension, for its Nevada “parent”).
3. You have launched an ad campaign that further promotes the slogan that so successfully promotes Las Vegas.
Ever wonder why Pepsi doesn’t air commercials that say, “Sure, Coca-Cola might be ‘The Real Thing,’ but Pepsi…”?
Of course, it’s not “your” money that’s paying for your “Let’s Shoot Ourselves In The Foot” campaign. It’s your election campaign’s money.
And perhaps we should applaud you for breaking with tradition and not spending your extra campaign dollars on gambling, booze and hookers in Las Vegas.
But I gotta tell you, if the monkeys’ defamation case ever comes to trial, I just might need to testify as a witness for the plaintiffs.
Here’s another radio commercial honored as “best of the best” finalist in the 2007 Radio Mercury Awards.
I saw this on my friend 
