Las Vegas has plenty of regulars. You’ve got your gambling grandmas, your bachelor and bachelorette parties, your Elvis impersonators, your big-hatted and loudmouthed high rollers, and plenty of just regular folks coming in to try and make a few bucks off the backs of gambling’s titans. 

In 2012, about 40 million folks came into town to enjoy the lights, noise, and shows of Vegas, but the insatiable tourism board wants a whole lot more. After all, there are nearly 125,000 hotel rooms and 365 nights to fill. Cue a new tourism and place branding campaign, one that touts the city's official digital hub at its busiest time of year.Continue reading...

Often when a celebrity dies, no matter what kind of damage they may have done to themselves, the culture, or their families, their image suddenly gets cleaned and polished up quite nicely. 

Whoever is controlling the after-death image of Frank Sinatra, though, appears to want to go in the other direction. The mystique of Sinatra – a lady-killing, cocktail-swilling, cocked-hat-wearing Vegas-owning charmer with a sweet singing voice – isn’t getting cleaned up at all. Instead, his famed tippling ways are being amplified by Jack Daniel’s, which is bottling the Ol' Blue Eyes magic with Sinatra Select whisky.

To support the launch, Jack Daniel’s parent Brown Forman is now opening “Sinatra Experience” installations in duty-free shops at airports across the globe that will allow travelers to take a sip of the limited-edition whisky, check out images of Sinatra in action, and listen to his tunes.Continue reading...

Hawaii's St. Regis Princeville Resort (The Descendants), Bruges, Belgium (In Bruges), Forks, Washington (Twilight) and New York's Museum of natural History (Night at the Museum) would all attest to the power of location-based product placement. The marketing potential that appearing in a Hollywood picture can bring to a particular location. But that swings the other way.

Some in Lebanon are upset about how it was depicted in the Showtime terrorism-themed drama Homeland; so upset they're pondering a lawsuit against the producers. Then, tourism officials a world away in Fargo, North Dakota are nervously anticipate the launch of a new series based on the cult favorite film Fargo, a movie many in the city have just started warming up to. But neither have a complaint as large as Turkey, maybe the most smeared location in Hollywood history.

Now, in 2012, Turkey is onscreen in two huge new films. One has already proven not to Turkey's liking. Will the new James Bond film finally reverse 34 years of Hollywood history for Turnkey?Continue reading...

Eva Longoria certainly isn't the first actress or actor to yield to the conceit that they've got a great idea for a restaurant. But she may be the first to think she can sell a steakhouse aimed at women. Thus, Longoria's part-owned SHe by Morton's is reportedly all set for launch by New Year's Eve in Las Vegas.

It replaces her old Las Vegas eatery, Beso, a failed restaurant in which she also was a part-owner, on the same site. And while she's no longer busy with Desperate Housewives, she is busy campaigning for Barack Obama, and appeared at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte to pitch her personal story in an outreach to women and Hispanics — two groups she'd no doubt welcome to her relaunched dining concept, too.

With a 1920's theme, SHe aims to be "an updated interpretation of the gilded age when wealth and excessive opulence ruled America's upper-class combined with a modern version of art deco to create a feeling of empowerment, especially for female guests," according to a news release. While set in the era of Prohibition, it won't prohibit men — and may have a successful role model in STK, a Vegas chophouse with a sexy vibe located at the racy Cosmopolitan hotel with the tagline "Not your daddy's steakhouse," which is also aimed at high-rolling, confident women.Continue reading...

The tony Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas made its name with the “Just the right amount of wrong” campaign.

Building on that theme this summer was an on-site installation that invited the public to share their "right amount of wrong" in an exhibition called "Confessions," a public art project designed by New Orleans artist and TED Fellow Candy Chang, whose public installations aim to spark conversation. Visitors were asked to share their secrets anonymously, keeping the brotherhood intact of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but wooing over 1,500 confessions by exhibit end.

As artist-in-residence at The Cosmopolitan, Chang turned its P3 Studio gallery into a giant confessional, “inspired by Post Secret, Shinto shrine prayer walls, and Catholicism, people could write and submit their confessions on wooden plaques in the privacy of confession booths.” The confessional themes that emerged ran the gamut: “Over half were about sex, love, or fears of dying alone.”Continue reading...

For decades, if not centuries, groups of men that travel together for work or pleasure have been murmuring to one another, “You keep my secrets and I’ll keep yours.”

It was only 12 years ago that marketing firm R&R Partners borrowed the idea and came up with “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas,” which has so firmly lodged itself into popular culture that it’s hard to remember a time when the phrase didn’t exist. It’s easy to think that Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were using it back in the mid-‘60s or certainly the larger-than-life Elvis using it during his jumpsuited years there in the early ‘70s.

The phrase certainly suggests that visitors to the city go right ahead and toss whatever inhibitions they may have aside, and so plenty of folks have followed suit. You’ve got O.J. Simpson and a few pals breaking in on some sports-memorabilia peddlers. You’ve got Tiger Woods hooking up with mistresses. You’ve got Paris Hilton getting nabbed for cocaine possession.

And then Prince Harry, third in line to take over for Queen Elizabeth II, went and played some strip billiards with some gals he just met. Continue reading...

For decades, new Las Vegas hotel/casinos have been incredibly over-the-top and, let's face it, garish: a pyramid, a pirate-themed one, a mini re-creation of New York City, King Arthur’s castle, the list goes on. But now a casino is heading in the opposite direction by leveraging the Nobu brand to attract a new clientele.

Nobu Hospitality partners including Chef Nobu Matsuhisa, Robert De Niro and Meir Teper, along with designer David Rockwell and principals from Caesars Palace, held a press conference this week at the original Nobu in New York City to reveal the concept for the world's first Nobu Hotel, set to open in Las Vegas late 2012.

The design for the Nobu Hotel at Caesars Palace looks to bring the zen palate of Nobu restaurants to life — an oasis for well-heeled high-rollers to calm their nerves and enjoy the good life after making (or losing) more cash at the city’s many gambling tables.Continue reading...

Competition for locals looking to book "nearcations" in New York City's tri-state area is heating up. While the Big Apple doesn't need much help on the marketing front, Connecticut just launched its big tourism campaign. Now New Jersey's fabled Atlantic City is wooing northeastern residents to visit — and not for the reasons you might think. 

The Atlantic City Alliance, a non-profit funded and operated by local casinos, is focused on increasing tourism by pitching. The marketing challenge: how to promote a city synonymous with gambling without focusing on casinos? The strategy: woo potential visitors on the city's other charms, as part of a campaign titled "Do Anything. Do Everything."Continue reading...