The Hero of the Hero Campaign

Ad agency exec Kim Downing knows a thing or two about steering convention planners to a city

Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 2/5/2007

Kim Downing, a senior account executive at R&R Partners, has the perfect 21st century Cinderella story. Instead of relying on fairy godmothers, the 38-year-old Downing got her dream (disclaimer: no princes involved) through brains and hard work.

In 1990, with a bachelor's degree in hotel and restaurant management under her belt, Downing went to work at a Subway sandwich shop. Within a few years, she was district manager, then shop owner. When she got involved with marketing the franchise, she found her real calling: advertising.

Bored with fast food, Downing farmed out the management of her shop and went into advertising full-time. By 1998, she was promoting "Lord of the Rings" and "Wheel of Fortune" for SFX Entertainment; later, the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and Stratosphere for Outdoor Services.

With most of her background on the media side of the business, Downing took a job in 2001 at R&R, the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority's official advertising partner, to "learn the agency side of the business," she said. For the last two years, she has been the lead account executive on R&R's Heroes campaign, the group business market's answer to the What Happens Here, Stays Here campaign for the leisure market.

Inside the walls of what many in the ad industry have deemed the world's most successful destination marketing agency today, Downing sat down with Tradeshow Week Senior Editor Heidi Genoist and shared her insight on what goes into selling a city.

Question: Did you have any experience with the convention market before working on the LVCVA business and international markets?

Answer: I did not. I basically learned through self-education and working with the LVCVA. Everyone there is very knowledgeable and helpful in teaching you and showing you the business.

Advertising has been my passion, but I never really thought I'd get into the tradeshow and convention side of it. It's very interesting.

Q: What's interesting about it?

A: I've had the opportunity to attend some industry events with the client, and I really, really enjoyed them. It's interactive and energetic and fun. There's a different type of feeling from doing that type of business than the traditional business meeting. Conventions and tradeshows have a different energy.

Q: When you got the assignment that led to the Heroes campaign, did the LVCVA have specific goals for you?

A: We had been running the same campaign for a couple years and knew that we needed a refresh.

The LVCVA wanted us to help them with their existing relationships and in garnering new relationships — driving people to them so they could have ongoing one-on-one communications with the clients, and so they could ultimately send more referrals to the (hotel) properties. Everything we do in the business market is ultimately for the properties. We want to get those referrals and get more business to them.

Q: What, then, did you do first?

A: Before we embarked on trying to create a new message, we went out and did research to better understand meeting and convention planners and what they were looking for. We did both qualitative and quantitative research, focus groups in Washington, D.C., Chicago and Dallas, and national phone interviews. We went and talked to them cold, so they didn't know they were talking about Las Vegas, and we asked them how they go through the planning process, what their decision-making process is.

Once we got that information, we moved into specifics about Las Vegas, how they plan in Las Vegas and whether they were aware of the consumer campaign.

Q: With the phenomenal success of the What Happens Here, Stays Here campaign, did you feel a lot of pressure to develop something equally spectacular for the business side?

A: All of us here at R&R feel that the bar is really high all the time, regardless of What Happens Here, Stays Here. We feel that we need to do good work across the board, regardless of who the end user is. We need to make sure we're resonating and creating that emotional connection, because that's when you see results: when you speak to the inner self of your audience, rather than throwing information at them.

I don't know that What Happens Here, Stays Here raised that bar. It might have had an effect on the creatives, because they all want to do something really great on the same level.

Q: Were there any challenges that you felt you had to overcome, in terms of Las Vegas as a destination?

A: In the past there was a perception that Las Vegas is a party town and, "Why would I go there to do business?" From the research we did, that's not an issue any more. Planners know that Las Vegas is a leisure town as well as a good environment to get business done. (The leisure draw) wasn't a deterrent to them planning meetings here.

Learning that ... meant that we could move in a direction that was more in line with what we're doing for the consumer market.

Q: Any challenges in the development?

A: Not really. A lot of times it's hard to sell good creative ideas to your client, but that's not an issue with the LVCVA. They're very intuitive and open and willing to take risks.

Q: How is marketing Las Vegas different from, say, New York or Los Angeles?

A: I've never worked on any other destinations, but the LVCVA is very, very good at what they do. We can make a promise, and they deliver on it. They're also willing to step outside the box and do something different, which this campaign is. Most destinations push the physical amenities of meeting space, and this is a different approach.

Q: Las Vegas is unique in the U.S. meeting market in its large amount of space and hotel rooms. Was that a plus or a minus?

A: It's a plus, but it can be hard to navigate because of all the options. It did come out of the research that people sometimes don't know where to start. Using the LVCVA to help direct them to the properties that have what they're looking for really helps the planners.

Q: What else did you learn from your research?

A: There were actually three key findings that we took as the direction for the campaign. The first was that the consumer and leisure aspect wasn't a deterrent to booking here. The second was that 99 percent of planners that had used the LVCVA in the planning process were very highly satisfied with their interaction. Eighty-six percent who had used the LVCVA were more likely to book again in Las Vegas in the future, versus 31 percent of planners who hadn't used the LVCVA.

Q: So, was a goal to get people to go through the LVCVA instead of booking directly through the individual properties?

A: Yes — not to divert them from the properties, because the LVCVA doesn't show any preference; they send RFPs to all the hotels. But when a planner goes through the LVCVA for the RFP process, the LVCVA can be there to help them and follow up on the leads they've sent to the properties. Sometimes if the planners go direct, and a property doesn't have the rooms or the space, they might not get back to them in a really timely manner, because they're inundated. The LVCVA is a facilitator that makes the process easier for the planner; they follow up with 10 properties, instead of the planner having to do it.

Q: What was the third key finding?

A: That planners wanted respect. They needed to feel that their business was important, whether they had a group of 10 or 10,000 or 100,000. Hence, the hero, and using the LVCVA as a resource to make them look like a hero in their clients' and bosses' eyes.

Q: Was there an "Ah ha!" moment when you knew you had what you were after?

A: I think so. We came up with several difference concepts. When we're in that creative mode we're always throwing out ideas. You get a million ideas, and maybe one of them will stick. I think that's really where it was. We narrowed it down to three choices and Heroes really stood out well above the others.

Q: Why?

A: It's speaking directly to the planner, whereas in the past (the campaign) was speaking at them. In everything we do, we try to create an emotional connection. The hero was our way of speaking to their need to feel valued and putting them on a pedestal.

Q: When did the campaign roll out?

A: In May. We launched it at Springtime in Washington, D.C.

Q: Have you measured its impact?

A: We have been measuring. It's a little difficult, because we're not the end bookers. But our RFP conversions are up. We also rolled out a new RFP process that's more user-friendly, so part of the increased booking is probably due to that, but we believe we're driving more qualified users to the RFP so they're more likely to actually follow through to a final referral we can send to a property.

Q: Anecdotally, how's it doing?

A: The LVCVA has gotten great feedback from their clients. Not that it matters from a business standpoint, but we've gotten great reviews in Ad Week and AdAge. When we launched at Springtime, booth traffic for the LVCVA was up. We did some guerilla tactics around that.

Q: Like what?

A: We had some petit-cabs in and around the (Washington) Convention Center, bicycle drivers that drive little two-person cabs, that would drive attendees within a two-mile radius of the convention center at no charge, to lunch or their hotel, because the traffic around that area is really bad. We wanted to show how the LVCVA is there to serve them. We had some street teams handing out literature about LVCVA.com as a planning resource and scooter media with the creative. Booth traffic was substantially higher than the past year.

Q: What's next?

A: We're working on a C-suite campaign — everybody laughs at that name — targeting executive-level decision-makers and influencers, to shift their perception of Las Vegas to a good place to get serious business done. We're not trying to get them to do anything.

Q: What are you trying to do?

A: In our research, we talked to some C-level executives, and while we found that the perception of Las Vegas as a leisure destination isn't a deterrent for meeting planners, it sometimes still is among decision-makers. So, we'll be targeting them to convince them that their people won't be distracted by all Las Vegas has to offer, but that it will help open their minds and come up with that big idea.

Q: In your work, is there a conscious effort to distinguish Las Vegas from its Tier I competitors, Chicago and Orlando?

A: With the Heroes campaign, no; with the C-suite campaign, yes. A meeting room is a meeting room is a meeting room, and they all have pretty much the same amenities to offer, with the exception of a few destinations and properties. We were really trying to push people to the LVCVA as a resource. That was our differentiator.

Q: So it's more about distinguishing the LVCVA from the Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau or the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau, than about distinguishing Las Vegas from Orlando or Chicago?

A: Yes.

Q: If another city hired you tomorrow, what would you use that you've learned from this campaign?

A: The one thing that really stands out in my mind is, a lot of places have approached their business and leisure as two separate brands. I don't think that's always necessary, and sometimes it's even counter-productive. I think you should work with them more closely together and have some fun with it.

Q: If you were teaching Destination Marketing 101, what would you tell your students?

A: The traditional media buy is not always the way to go; being in the trade publications and relying on those to raise awareness isn't always the way to go. Meeting planners are using trade Web sites, and other sites for planning purposes. They need to look for other avenues and opportunities.