Can we leave Las Vegas?

Talk about Viral Marketing. Whether coincidental or planned, there seems to be a lot of buzz about Las Vegas. I admit, I don't read much and watch TV even less. Usually I'm busy going from one crisis to the next. But Las Vegas broke through the fog. Drive-thru chapels and kitshy motels appear as background in a VW ad in in Business 2.0. I don't recall the car, which was boxy and uncomfortable looking. The headline was something about feeling carefree and young, again. On the outskirts of Las Vegas. Personally, the only reason I'd go to Las Vegas would be as a hub to fly somewhere else. Is that why Vegas is being featured in an Expedia.com commercial? And is one of the players in the poker dream Steve Wynne? Curious. Maybe it's a big co-op. Maybe it's a conspiracy. Maybe it's just coincidence. Anyway...

One of the morning news show hosts recently quoted the line, "What you do here, stays here." I wondered about the power of that line, not as a marketing tool but as far as its intrusion into the collective consciousness (or unconciousness). So, I put it into a Yahoo! search today. The first listing was about an Artic trip that has nothing to do with Vegas; the next about a woman's recovery center; and the third was a challenge from a Detroit Free Press to come up with "a line as cool as...." ("Make somethin' of it! was the best.) Poor Detroit. We think of it more along the lines of drive-by shootings than drive-thru chapels. Motor City. Whatever happened to that one?

If any of you out here in cyberland has the answer...especially about the effectiveness of the Las Vegas marketing, let me know.

-- Queen Blogalina