What Happens in Vegas

Vegas cannot lose when it comes to PR. No matter what angle — good, bad, horizontal — Vegas comes out on top. People go into the desert and make money? Exciting. Vegas is filled with murderous mobsters? Sexy.

In some ways, the bad publicity seems to work even better than the good, helping to build Vegas' mystique. Fans of Casino and Swingers still flock to Vegas even though both movies paint Vegas as a lifeblood-sucking monster.

This "all news is good news" phenomenon even makes the act of writing about Vegas ethically dubious. Let's not fool ourselves: Vegas was created to separate a sucker from his money. Yet, while Indian casinos focus their ad campaigns on gambling — the possibility of the win — the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has moved in a different direction. Its slogan, "Vegas: What happens here, stays here," intends to imply anything but gambling. Instead, with such a tagline, Vegas is portrayed as a permanent mulligan zone where any action performed can immediately be undone by stepping outside the city limits.

On television, the commercials look like this:

An older woman who looks like she's spent the night in her clothes stands outside of a chapel. She tries to explain to the attractive young foreigner who only seems to understand her body language that yes, they're married, but she has to get her conference ... they'll talk later.

A woman and her friends introduce themselves with Vegas in the background. The names they give sound vaguely familiar. Cut to another glitzy location, where the women introduce themselves again, only this time, they give different names recognizable from a famous sitcom. Cut again, same deal, only this time we turn the camera to the two gentlemen they're talking to, who respond in kind, introducing themselves as Barney and Fred.

A limo driver picks up an attractive gal with long flowing hair who acts like's she's high on ecstasy. She comments in a highly suggestive, phone sex-operator voice that she loves the smell of leather, and proceeds to sniff and rub his back seat. When we finally pull up at our airport destination, the same woman exits the car, only her hair is up in a bun, she's wearing glasses and a button-up, and she's chatting quickly into her cell phone in a business-like tone and a tightly wound English accent. Just to remind us we're dealing with the same woman, she goes back to the stunned limo driver and leans in, drawing in a deep breath of his leathery aroma.

The visuals expand upon the text. Vegas allows you to live your fantasy, to be someone else. But in Vegas, the transcripts of the weekend are written on an Etch-a-Sketch — as soon as you leave, you can just shake yourself off and get back to your conventional daily routine. What is interesting is that the ads capture the spirit of gambling, but never actually mention it by name. The excitement of gambling is in the turnaround — the sudden change, up in chips, down, back again. The fantasy of being a winner is exchanged for a fantasy of appearing to be a winner, if only for a weekend.

Working against the tagline, the visuals portray Vegas not only as a place where you can leave your misdeeds behind, but as a place where great stories are made. After each of these ads, the viewer can visualize the one-upsmanship at the water cooler.

Bob: "Where did you go for your vacation?"
Ralph: "Hawaii. We hiked, swam, lay out by the beach. You?"
Bob: "Vegas. Met some crazy chicks the first night who gave us fake names, danced and drank all night. Got married, annulled it. Then the next day..."

Check and mate, Ralph.

The Vegas television spots appeal to the desire for new experiences and change without consequences. Someone stuck in their daily routine can pull a one-eighty in Vegas, then go back to his cubicle none the worse for wear. Vegas advertises itself as a place that will facilitate fulfilling all your desires, and leave you with a story you couldn't get anywhere else.

And if you leave a little money at a casino or two, they won't tell.

— Colin Alexander (colin_alexander at hotmail dot com)