I love my Ad Club.

Today was the season finale for the monthly luncheon series sponsored by the Ad Club of Western Massachusetts, a group I joined last December. I enjoy their events tremendously, always finding congenial people to talk to. Most of their gatherings are sit-down affairs, a venue I as a shy person find much easier than cocktail party-type get-togethers where I have to seek people out actively in order to connect. Today’s event was at the lovely Delaney House, a setting guaranteed to put guests in a convivial mood. I headed for a table with just one person seated there, thinking that relieving somebody else’s solitude would be a better idea than crashing a crowd, and thus I spent a very pleasant meal talking with a man who works for a company that produces in-theater advertising.

The program speaker today was Randy Snow, V.P. and Creative Director at R&R Advertising in Las Vegas. Randy is in charge of the highly successful “What happens here, stays here” campaign for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA). He’s also an accomplished speaker and had our rapt attention for 45 minutes while he told the history of that campaign. Some of the ads are super funny and I loved them all (even though none of them had voiceover!).

The LVCVA is obviously a big client. After 9/11 they were very concerned – about a lot of things, of course, but one big concern was what would happen to the tourism industry in this country. Randy Snow had an idea (borrowed from Sam Walton), which was to ask the customers. Thousands of people were stranded in Las Vegas then and Snow and his team went out with note pads and talked to people. They asked them – "what should we do?" Almost everyone they spoke with said the same thing: when we start to recover from this disaster and start to think about traveling again, we probably aren’t going to feel like going to the Middle East or even Europe. You need to be here for us. Keep doing what you’re doing. So that’s exactly what they did. They’ve been doing it ever since, and there has been no diminution whatsoever in travel to Vegas since that time.

I don’t know where I’ve been in the years since these ads started running but I had only seen one of them on television. Here’s a great one: "The Wedding". I’ve never been to Las Vegas and have never felt the urge, but after seeing all those ads, I just might up and go and be somebody else for a few days. Not sure who, but I’ll find out when I get there!

When it came time to pick the door prize winners, Randy Snow pulled the business cards from the basket and handed them to the President of the Ad Club. I saw him pull mine out and the President looked at it and turned it over and felt it and said, “ooh, what a nice card!” Score another one for Vaskevich Studios, who designed those as a gift. I’m a very lucky gal to have such beautiful cards (and I made sure that Mr. Snow got one to keep).

I seem to have gotten myself onto the Event Planning Committee for next season. Not sure where I will find the time, but usually the busier I am the more efficient I am. And busy and efficient are both good things.