Question of the Day - 21 December 2020

Many casinos have gotten pretty lenient about having photographs and videos taken on their gambling floors. They like the publicity, for the most part. And with the vast expansion of casinos, the destigmatizing of gambling, and the advent of cell-phone cameras, both still and video, the days of casinos strictly prohibiting photography of any kind are, also mostly, a thing of the past.

You can read our latest answer about photos in casinos in a Question of the Day from 2019.

Certainly, influencers, such as Brian Christopher, "The Big Jackpot," "Slot Lady," and others are either invited or have express permission to do what they do: video themselves playing slot machines.  

Using social-media influencers is a common practice in many retail businesses outside of casinos, especially nightlife establishments. It's a way to build marketing exposure to a targeted group of customers. It was only a matter of time before the practice extended to casinos.

The Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority’s Maria Phelan reports, “As part of our overall destination-marketing efforts, the LVCVA does work with social influencers — and has for years — to promote Southern Nevada with the goal of helping influencers showcase our many resorts, attractions and other offerings to their followers.”

But she cautions, “It would be inaccurate to couch social influencers as being treated like whales. The goal of hosting influencers is to help them experience Las Vegas in order to share their experiences and point of view with their followers.”

Caesars Entertainment said, yes, it does work with social influencers, without elaborating.

Boyd Gaming said no, it doesn't.

MGM Resorts International and Las Vegas Sands promised to get back to us, but didn’t.

According to VitalVegas.com blogger Scott Roeben, the Palms was a heavy user back when it was open and the Cosmopolitan continues to be. “Yeah, a few casinos use influencers, although not the smart ones, necessarily, as the [return on investment] is questionable,” he adds. One example is Red Rock Resorts’ Twitter fan page.

Roeben delves into the influencer/casino relationship. “In most cases, casinos provide rooms and dining comps with the understanding the influencers will share their experience with their audience. In some cases, there's straight-up compensation. The challenge is that influencers often don’t move the needle for casinos at all. It's really a way for public-relations staff to be able to tell their bosses they’re using social influencers to increase their reach, etc. A lot of times, even celebrities with large audiences don’t get a lot of engagement, so it’s flushing money down the toilet. Some supposed influencers are now so sophisticated, they pitch visiting with promises of exposure to get freebies.”

Roeben isn’t talking just as an observer. “I'm happy to say I’m considered an influencer. Not self-proclaimed, of course, and occasionally I accept a hosted dinner, usually so I can try more dishes than I’d get if it wasn't comped. I think these companies like people they know are going to say nice things about them. They know they’ll get honesty from me, which ruins a lot of potential partnerships.” 

We don't often toot our own horn, but the Las Vegas Advisor has been a "social-media" influencer for decades, long before the new breed of technology was even conceived. It's true that social media has evolved enormously past print and even online newsletters and coupon books and your faithful influencers here at LasVegasAdvisor.com are working diligently toward upgrading our technological capabilities to keep up with the times. You'll be hearing much more about this in the coming weeks and months. 

As a start, here's the link to our new YouTube channel. We posted our first video last week. The focus is on someone who will be familiar to most of you, Anthony Curtis himself, doing a bit of what he does best: talking off the cuff about Las Vegas. In the 11-minute video, A.C. summarizes the current situation in Las Vegas vis-a-vis the pandemic and explains the current restrictions. The audio is a little off (we're working on that) and the video is longer than we anticipate future Vegas/Virus videos to run, but that’s because of time devoted to bringing the story up to date.

When you check out this first post, be sure to hit the Subscribe button on the right hand side beneath the screen to be alerted to new videos. Along with the virus and other news updates, we have plans for many other videos on Las Vegas and gambling as we expand the channel.

The one thing you can count us not doing, of course, is posting useless information on gambling, e.g., walking around and indiscriminately playing the bandits for no reason and with no lessons learned for viewers.

As for other social media, here are the links to our Twitter feed and Facebook page.