How Not to Use the Media

The first full week of the new year, the one when most of us were back at work and paying attention, was apparently proclaimed Try-to-Plant-a-Story Week in Las Vegas.

Most successful at getting the mainstream media to run with what it wanted was the Consumer Electronics Assn., which persuaded a handful of gullible reporters to write in a number of national publications that it was considering moving Intl. CES out of Las Vegas. Not so successful – so far, at least – was Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who told a consortium of construction labor unions expected to work on the Las Vegas Convention Center expansion that it had a matter of days to meet his demands or he'd turn the job site over to non-union workers.

On the first day of Intl. CES this year, along with the usual gadget stories, was one explaining that the CEA was concerned about the rising cost of hotel rooms in Las Vegas and would start looking for alternatives to the city.

CEA officials come by their belief this ploy might work honestly: It helped the Natl. Restaurant Assn. a couple of years ago when it threatened to pull its Natl. Restaurant Assn. Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show out of Chicago if there weren't changes to labor rules. Getting a couple of well-placed stories in Chicago papers attracted enough attention to allow the NRA to achieve its goal … but the restaurant show, a mere No. 30 on the 2007 Tradeshow Week 200, could move to another city if it really wanted to.

Seriously though, where is CES, with its 1.85 million-plus net square feet spread out over multiple venues and 130,000-plus attendees, going to go? What other city has that much space and that many hotel rooms available in the busy month of January?

If pointing the media in the direction it wants is all it takes for CEA officials to get Las Vegas hoteliers to give them a break on hotel rooms and the convention center some discounts on exhibit space, good for them … but I'm skeptical.

Now, back to Goodman. As was reported several weeks ago in TSW Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority board (which Goodman chairs) thought it had made a deal with a group of construction unions to not strike or in any other way hold up progress once work started on the LVCC expansion (something important to show organizers with events booked at the center during construction). Lo and behold, bright and early the morning of Jan. 8, the leader of the building and construction unions told the LVCVA board that, um, he had misspoken and not all the unions he represents were on board.

In a public meeting, with reporters (including TSW's) present and pens poised, Goodman told the unions a deal was a deal and they had a week and a half to come around. The assembled army of union leaders more or less rumbled, “We'll see about that,” and stormed out.

This time, none of the reporters took the bait. They knew there wouldn't be any work on the expansion for a union to strike anyway for at least nine months, plenty of time for the parties to work out an agreement; that national labor organizations were focusing their attention on Las Vegas (in fact, the culinary workers were set to endorse U.S. Sen. Barack Obama the following day, less than 24 hours after the New Hampshire primary election); that Goodman was looking to get a little ink (and support from conservative board members) with his I'm-tough-on-unions routine, and that the unions were just as desperate to show him he wasn't that tough after all.

Aside from all the huffing and puffing, there was no news to report. So, as it should have been with the CEA, the message to Goodman was, “Better luck next time.”