Paul Szydelko
Even from its earliest days, Las Vegas has aggressively marketed itself. The need to create and propel its own narratives, spur curiosity and try to overcome business lulls has resulted in many campaigns of varying reach and success.
The man at least partially responsible for many of those marketing initiatives, Rossi Ralenkotter, died on Oct. 10. Ralenkotter was involved with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the city's semi-public tourism and convention destination marketing arm, since 1973 and led it from 2004 to 2018.
The centerpiece of his time at the LVCVA was a dazzling national campaign that started in 2003 and still resonates today. "What Happens Here, Stays Here" succinctly summarized Vegas's enticing "adult freedom" ethos -- the opportunity for guests to pursue gaudy escapism and bawdy adventure 24 hours a day in Vegas and then resume their lives back home.
• Related: Arnie Weissmann on Rossi Ralenkotter's legacy
But Vegas experimented with other themes before and after that landmark campaign.
The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1911 just six years after the city itself, promoted the "City of Destiny," wrote Michael Green, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in a 2023 essay in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
In the late 1920s and 1930s, Las Vegas advertised itself as "The Gateway to Boulder Dam," now Hoover Dam. Postcards that read "Still a Frontier Town" promoted an Old West theme.
Marketing leaned into the state's role in nuclear weapons testing in the late 1950s with the iconic Miss Atomic Bomb image. Recent research has confirmed Anna Lee Mahoney of Bronx, N.Y., who performed as a Sands copa girl with the stage name Lee Merlin, posed in the desert in 1957 for the Las Vegas News Bureau. The symbol deftly conveyed Cold War science, spectacle and midcentury Strip entertainment.
Promotion of celebrity culture (Liberace, Elvis and Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack) prevailed for decades before marketing executive Sig Rogich came up with "No One Does it Better" in the 1980s and then "Resort Bargain of the World."
Rogich's marketing team and Ralenkotter teamed to create "What Happens Here, Stays Here," which morphed into "What Happens Here, Only Happens Here" in 2020. Other recent themes have included "Vegas You," welcoming guests back from the Covid-19 shutdown; "Excessive Celebration Encouraged," to ramp up to the 2024 Super Bowl; "Whatever You Go For, Go All Out," casting the city as a live and sports and entertainment destination; and "Yes, Chef," characterizing the Strip as a culinary hot spot.
The "Welcome to Fabulous" campaign introduced in September is just the latest in the region's effort to draw attention to the Strip and downtown Las Vegas as places to escape the doldrums of everyday life and to boost visitation amid 2025's slump.