Yesterday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal was an extremely interesting full-page ad for South Point, the last casino on the south end of Las Vegas Boulevard, several miles beyond Mandalay Bay. It is probably one of the most surprising casino ads I have ever seen and it reinforces big time yesterday’s blog entry about the growing intensity of casino competition. The casinos are bringing out the big guns in their war for customers.

In this astonishing ad South Point eschewed pictures of people with their heads thrown back in laughter as they were playing slot machines, pictures of fancy dishes full of gourmet foods you couldn’t identify, and pictures of sexy models on massage tables with rocks on their backs. The bold-lettered, black-and-white ad was filled with three large charts comparing in detail the slot-club point systems at South Point, Station Casinos, and Coast Casinos. At the top of the ad, in big lettering:

DON’T BE FOOLED

What Are Your Slot Club

Points Really Worth?

Then the three charts showed what you could get at each of the casinos if you earned 1,000 points on non-bonus days and then on days with various bonus multipliers. They didn’t skip another factor a wise player would want to know and, at the bottom of the ad, they added: “Looser slots – over 7,000 machine combinations that are 99% payback or better.”

This could be a model for “truth in advertising.” I have seen a lot of casinos that try to make themselves look good in ads by generalities that sound great but give no specific information: “You get more with our slot club.”  I have seen casino ads that tout numbers which give incomplete information and thus false impressions: “1,000 points at our casino gives you $2 in cash while at others you get only $1.” Of course they don’t say that it takes 4X the coin-in at their casino to get that 1,000 points.

What was interesting about this amazing South Point ad was not just how forthright and complete it was about the details of their slot club and how other clubs suffered in comparison, but the fact that they named specific competing casinos (Stations and Coast casinos). There has always been a better-than-the-rest tone, either subtly or directly, in casino ads, and once in a while you would see a mention of specific competitors. (I remember last fall, when Silverton ran an ad inviting Station casino customers to come there and get the same level card and a free-play bonus.) But I have never seen such a direct “attack” on the competition.

It also was an interesting ad once you remember who owns South Point - Michael Gaughan. The same Michael Gaughan who built and ran the Coast properties for years and years and then sold them to the Boyd group, under which he continued to look after the Coast properties, including the new South Coast. The same Michael Gaughan who decided he wanted his own casino again, so he bought the under-performing South Coast from the Boyd group and renamed it South Point!

I say it again. Ain’t casino competition great?

[Email Blogger]