May 22 2010:      Aaron Goldman stood well past six feet, with just the ghost of a frown that gave him a look of perpetual contemplation. We became close friends immediately, bound together by the brotherhood of long distance runners and our desires to one day complete a marathon. It seemed years away when we both began to run with the Las Vegas Track Club. Five miles left us laboring. We trained together as the months piled up and soon we could run up to fifteen miles and feel strong at the finish. Then to twenty miles. Aaron held a Ph.D in statistics, taught at UNLV and worked part time at Los Alamos on special government projects he always passed off as "math problems." Once he worked for weeks on the most efficient way to fill a box so that every bit of the space was occupied. At least, that's the way he described it. We raced every weekend with the Track Club and gradually became two of its best. One week he'd beat me, the next I'd beat him, but overall he was the superior runner. We both became successful marathoners who ran well under three hours, but while my love for running ebbed, his expanded. He ran 100-milers, then ran 151 miles in 48 hours at the age of 70. Then 200 miles in 72 hours at age 73. We lived far apart by this time but always kept in touch. We saw Aaron and his wife, Peggy, late last year. They had begun regular trips to Denver so doctors could treat his bile duct cancer, for which there is still no cure. We laughed and joked about the Las Vegas races we ran together. One day Aaron ran off the course, became lost, and didn't appear until the entire field had finished. He ran to the finish line where most of us had waited and stood clapping to urge him on. He stopped a foot short and turned away. "I don't deserve to finish," he told us. No one could laugh at someone so dedicated, so honest, so humble, so kind and gentle to everyone. Such men inspire us. His cancer worsened in February, his weight dropped and running became impossible. Aaron Sampson Goldman, 78, died on April 26, 2010. I never knew your middle name, my good friend, but it certainly fits. R.I.P.

      May 11 2010:      So US antitrust "enforcers" are showing interest in recent charges by competitors against Apple. What's new about that? The government always has a problem with private companies that make tons of money. The Wall Street Journal says the FTC and the Justice Department are "holding discussions,' and no one dares make a comment. Here's the problem: according to the Journal, "Apple has revised the rules to forbid developers from using software tools other than Apple's tools to build their programs." What the hell? If your company was on top you'd do the same thing. "Concerns have mounted," says the Journal, as Apple has become a dominant smartphone maker. Only if you're a competitor should you have problems with a company that has sold 85 million iPhones and iPod Touches, plus one million iPads right out of the chute. No wonder Apple's business model has stayed closed. Why shouldn't they deal with owners only? The plain fact is--Apple makes too much money. If Justice and the FTC can squeeze several million from the company it could operate the government for a full 15 minutes. No. Make that five minutes.

      May 1 2010:      So you're going to play a little Blackjack tonight at the local casino. Naturally, you want to be alert--even aroused. No problem. Just yawn a lot. Don't try to stop yourself by holding your mouth shut, just flare those nostrils and unhinge that jaw. Yawn, baby, yawn. The newest scientific evidence shows it cools your brain. And if there's anytime you really need a cool brain, it's at Blackjack Now you can have it thanks to Jessica Yadegaran's recent story in the Contra Casa Times. Here's what Jessica discovered: our brains are like computers. They operate more efficiently when cool. Yawning has nothing to do with boredom or rudeness. You yawn because your brain is too warm. You yawn at bedtime because that's when the body temperature is highest. Yawning begins in the womb, says one scientist, and only humans, chimps and baboons are contagious. Okay cool brain, now you'll kill 'em at the tables.

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      April 22 2010:      Did you hear about the new way to forecast economic trends? The "experts," whoever they are, simply traipse out to a busy subway station, or check the ticket sales for a play, or take a close look at sales of Diesel fuel. Then they give you an immediate figure on sales-tax revenue. The Wall Street Journal named it, "Reading High-Tech Tea Leaves," and admitted the method Is "unconventional" and "oddball." The upside appears to be all the time it saves. Thus, says the Journal, subway passenger traffic (San Francisco) can be used to forecast sales tax revenue; Broadway ticket sales (New York) can forecast tourist revenue, and Diesel fuel sales (California) can forecast industrial production. Just imagine how your casino can reduce expenses now. Do you want to know how the month will end? Count how many customers head for the games and slots when the show breaks. If the star is an-off color comic add 18%. Or check the bikinis at the pool. A nice crop induces your players to hang around instead of rushing to a nearby competitor, which means an upswing in slots. See how easy it is? Now you can rush into the GM's office and relay the good news by the 15th of every month. Maybe.

      April 11 2010:      Let's say you're a large casino in Las Vegas. You have a big budget, but you've decided to see how much money you can save and how much business you can generate from the Social Media. You join one of the largest, troll for casino-goers (or for those who'd like to be one) and make some nice progress. From here on, you can't be too careful about your content. Herewith, a lesson on the unlikely from Swiss candymaker Nestle. The company was surprised three weeks ago, says the Wall Street Journal, as "digitally savvy" environmental activists launched a three-pronged attack again Nestle's use of palm-oil in KitKat candy bars and other products. The protestors posted a negative video on YouTube, swamped Nestle's Facebook page and hit Twitter with claims Nestle is helping to destroy Indonesia's rain forests and potentially contributing to global warming. This is happening, protestors say, because Nestle purchases palm-oil from an Indonesian company that, according to Greenpeace, is clearing rain forests. Within days, 95,000 protestors swarmed over Nestle's Facebook page. P.S. Nestle says the firm in question supplied just 1.25% of Nestle's palm oil last year. Is anyone listening?

      April 1 2010:      Closing in on retirement, are you? Looking forward to sleeping in, playing a little golf, occupying yourself in a desultory but pleasant manner as the dictionary defines "puttering?" Better sit down for this one. A new survey concludes you'll need two, maybe even three million bucks to live happily ever after. A bit more than you expected, right? When Scottrade polled 226 investment advisers recently, 71 percent said $1 million is no longer enough for the average American family. The main reasons according to Scottrade: longer life spans, the threat of inflation and the uncertain future of Social Security benefits. Maybe they didn't want to hurt the government's feelings, but my guess is that an umpteen trillion dollar debt within 10 years and all sorts of ugly taxes figured in their conclusions somewhere. In Joe Mont's story for thestreet.com he says seniors (65 or older) may be the only generation that can scrape by on a lousy one million. A retirement specialist who took part in the survey says, "I've never been a big fan of earning less in retirement than you're making now." So seniors, forget the sleeping in and the golf. From here in in, your only chance is video poker.

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      March 22 2010:      Five major publishers will spend $90 million in advertising this year to convince readers and advertisers ´The Internet is fleeting. Magazines are immersive.¡ That?s the headline on the ad you?ll find in May inside Time, ESPN the Magazine, Vanity Fair. and others. The new determination arose after a two-year period in which magazine ad revenue took a hike. Now the big five publishers say ads are drifting back again. I hope they?re correct because magazines are usually filled with writing much more diverse and interesting than the stuff found in newspapers. But before they commit the $90 million maybe they should ask why advertisers pulled back in the first place. Since I?ve been in direct marketing for decades and love the ad business, I?m going to take a guess that will be derided by every ad agency that sees it. Magazine advertising went south because the advertisers got no measurable results. They ran their ads and nothing happened. Simple as that. Would you keep throwing your ad money down a hole or would you rather spend it where he results come across your desk every day? Here?s the overview: the creative people in many ad agencies can make handsome, colorful ads--but they don?t know how to sell. See my ´Tip of the Week¡ piece on your right and I?ll tell you why.

      March 11 2010:      Just imagine you're going to be away fishing for two or three days and you write some of your friends on Twitter to let them know where they can reach you. A "location-sharing service" named Foursquare picks up Twitter posts daily (yours among them) and posts them. Then a second company posts them again in a chronological list under the heading of "Recent Empty Homes." The name of this second company is "Please Rob Me." Are you beginning to see the picture? The AP story that unearthed this impossible little nonsense also revealed people are now "comfortable" sharing personal details on social sites such as Facebook. And now those same people are rushing to "location based" Web services such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt--none of which I've ever heard of. Well, you're reasoning, it shouldn't be hard to get "Please Rob Me" off the screen. Wrong. It's based in Holland and run by a guy named Boy Van Amstel, who says he's actually trying to point out that people are sharing too much information online without realizing it. And he says his site doesn't show empty homes or addresses. I don't care what his site shows. I don't like it.

      March 1 2010:      They're still scrambling around on the Web, trying to find out what type of advertising consumers want. Most don't want any. But those who do no longer will be held captive by the "pre-roll" ads they're required to watch before viewing online video clips. A new format named "Ad Selector" lets them choose the video clip they want to see. Sounds like a new form of torture to me, but the Wall Street Journal says consumers are more likely to watch and recall an ad they choose rather than having ads forced on them. Video ads, says the Journal, are among the fastest-growing parts of online advertising even though they're still a small part of the overall ad spending. Here's how "Ad Selector" hopes to drag in new media companies. Ads from three different brands appear and if a Web user likes one of them he clicks on it and watches. If the user doesn't click on one of them, says the Journal, the host company's ad server chooses one for him. "Ad Selector," says the Journal, trounced "pre-roll" by 2-1 in a two-month test. Media companies, however, still want to get a better measure of an ad's effectiveness. Same old story. The smart guys want proof their ads are selling something. So far, the all-powerful Web still relies on "recall scores," that don't prove a damn thing.

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      February 22 2010:      Your faithful reporter was an underage clarinetist and jazz freak in the late 40s, sneaking into joints at the beach in California to see the last of the greats. And to prove my credentials I ask a simple question. Can you hum the blues riff in Artie Shaw's "Summit Ridge Drive?" Author Tom Nolan calls the number "a masterpiece of small-combo jazz." If you've heard it you've never forgotten it. And now Nolan's new book on Shaw links this marvelous little piece to the start of the rock 'n' roll revolution. Here's how Nolan tells it: Shaw and Benny Goodman were the clarinet stars of the era, and both had pulled together small combos from their big bands. Shaw's "Gramercy 5" included drummer Nick Fatool, trumpeter Billy Butterfield and pianist Johnny Guarnieri. The night before they recorded their first set of records, Shaw asked Guarnieri if he could play the harpsichord. He couldn't, but after practicing into the night and the next morning, he learned it. When the combo recorded "Summit Ridge Drive," written by Shaw, Nolan says the winning combination of clarinet, trumpet and harpsichord proved to be a classic that sold millions. And here's Nolan quoting legendary Memphis record producer Sam Phillips, whose sessions with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash helped launch rock: "The best music gives us a unique and timeless solace. Listen to 'Summit Ridge Drive' by Artie Shaw." P.S. Nolan's book is "Three Chords for Beauty's Sake: The Life of Artie Shaw." I'd buy it.

      February 11 2010:      Lots of funny commercials in the Super Bowl. But funny advertising is like froth on the head of tap beer. You like it, then it's gone and forgotten. David Ogilvy, the best ad man who ever lived, called such commercials "A curse on the ad business." More like a curse on sponsors who pay two tabs--one to the ad agency, one to the network. The Super Bowl invariably produces the worst advertising of the year--if you prefer your ads to actually sell something stronger than froth. Okay then--on with the annual guessing game. If you remember even one of the sponsors of these throwaways, you win: (1) Two kids fly around on broomsticks, laughing and shouting. A flying monster appears and things get a bit dicey--but they elude him and fly on happily (2) Giant metal claws snatch any human within range. Monsters lurk in the background. One guy rides a claw, waves his arms and cheers (3) A couple (the man played by Chevvy Chase) makes hotel reservations, goes on vacation and has a terrible time. The parking lot attendant kicks their car and they're charged for "complimentary water" when they check out (4) Two guys in a pickup speed across an ocean pier with a live whale in the truck bed. The driver slams on the brakes and the pickup spins, ejecting the whale, who lands in the water and swims away. (5) The Bonus Commercial (you might get this one). NFL players in game uniforms sing a dumb song and embarrass themselves trying to dance. Coach Mike Ditka shouts a few words in a bit part. (Sponsor names lurk below.)

(1) Universal Orlando Resort (2) Vizio Internet Apps (3) HomeAway.com (4) Bridgestone (5) Boost Mobile

      February 1 2010:      The Romero "Guess the Sponsor" contest is now in its 10th year. If you're in charge of advertising at any casino on earth (or even if you just grind out ads for another type of business) here's the deal. First, watch the Super Bowl's allegedly miraculous but mostly hopeless commercials. Then check this space on Feb. 11, and play "Guess the Sponsor." I write four or five descriptions of Super Bowl commercials, you read them, then try to remember who sponsored them. Sounds easy, right? You'll be lucky to get even one. This really is a contest for ad directors and creatives who think they know how to sell. But if their ad sponsors can't be recalled a day or so later, what good were the ads? Sounds absurd, but most viewers laugh when they see the invariably nonsensical spots but forget the sponsors in mere seconds. This is not the sort of advertising that sells anything, but sponsors seem to love it because it's funny. The ad agencies, of course, love it because they get commissions on spots that cost from 2.5 to 2.8 million for 30 seconds--and can't be tracked for effectiveness. Love--it's wonderful. P.S. Take the test on Feb. 11.

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      January 22 2010:      (Continued from Jan. 11) Fact was, casino direct mail succeeded mostly because of the quality of our lists. If you send the right offer to the right list you can misspell every other word and get results. So casinos assumed a format based on "originality" was fine. But imagine the uptick in response if you had not only the right offer and right list, but the high touch, personal approach as well. But I seldom see it in today's casino mail. The writers don't understand the more adjectives they use the more they weaken their argument. And many have never learned the difference between features and benefits and how to exploit the difference. Too bad. A growing expression of high tech over high touch is Email. In online magazines the writers chortle when postage costs go up or direct mail takes a phony hit from environmental activists. They predict the imminent demise of mail and a massive switch to Email. That happens--but not if you're trying to sell a product, a service or a package deal in Las Vegas. If you take a close look at our industry, what kind of advertising has been salvation for the casinos that know how to use it?. Not general advertising, not Email, not viral, not mobile and not the social networks . Direct mail still does the job.

      January 11 2010:      (Continued from Jan. 11) What I didn't realize in those early days of direct mail was that the casino business would embrace high tech but not "high touch," as John Naisbitt called it in Megatrends. As mail became the most productive casino advertising medium, technology overpowered salesmanship; graphics overpowered words. The enemy turned out to be originality. In general advertising, originality is everything. The more goofy and confusing ideas you have, the more you get paid. In direct marketing we step back and draw our swords when clients ask us to get original. The word is anathema. As David Ogilvy stated so bluntly, "originality" to direct marketers means untested and untried. Let me elaborate. It means playing hunches; it means guessing; it means the cool beats the proven; it means the dazzling trounces the comprehensive; it means the indirect trumps the direct. With so many direct mail tactics proven to work by thousands of consumer mailings, why experiment? But no. We turned out tons of good-looking but irrelevant mail. Instead of talking about the customer (high touch) it talked about the casino. Instead of playing to direct mail's strength we played to its weakness. (To be concluded in my posting of Jan. 22).

      January 1 2010:      One day in the late 60's a guy named Charlie Tarr opened a Las Vegas lettershop. "Addressing & Mailing, Inc.," I think he named it. I still remember Charlie dashing into my office at the Sahara Las Vegas and telling me he could actually give me selected zip codes. For a guy laboring 40 years ago in the uncertain beginnings of casino direct mail, it was heady stuff. The options! The possibilities! The sheer power! The precise targeting! Okay, so I overdid that a little. But from that day forward I relegated traditional advertising to a secondary position behind direct marketing. I knew I had a winner. I loved direct marketing in general (and direct mail in particular) because it was so scientific, so clinical. There was no mystique about it, no gut emotion that made advertisers part with their money on faith alone. It either delivered or you knew the reason why. For a whole industry like ours sustained by a slight mathematical advantage, it was perfect. I laughed my head off the first time I ever heard the old quote, "I know half my advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half." With direct response advertising you knew what every penny did for you. How embarrassing, I thought, for a general advertiser to be so blatantly uninformed that he brags about his ignorance. What rational casino advertiser would put up with that? Hey, the players are supposed to guess--not the casino. (To be continued in my posting of Jan. 11).

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      December 22 2009:      The headline on Elizabeth Bernstein's Wall Street Journal story read, "The dark side of Webtribution." The story told of a young woman who discovered dozens of her MySpace friends had received anonymous email calling her a tramp and a home wrecker. Family members questioned her morals. Co-workers whispered behind her back. Some friends cut her off entirely. She endured this for months while denying the charges...when another woman found her husband cheating she logged onto his FaceBook account, deleted his privacy settings and let him have it...a Florida woman, says Bernstein, won an $11.3 million decision against another woman who used the Internet to vent about her and her company...the Associated Press revealed a quarter of young people have been involved in "Sexting," sharing sexually explicit photos and videos via cell phone and online..in two cases, writes Libby Quaid of the AP, "Sexting" has been linked to suicides of teenage girls--an 18-year-old in Cincinnati and a 13-year-old in Florida. Both hung themselves...the Iranian government monitors Iranian students worldwide who use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to criticize the regime and often threatens their family members, says the Journal...I'm out of space but there's plenty more. I respect the social networks but I'll never join one.

      December 11 2009:      Full disclosure. I'm an NRA member. I've shot in tournaments. I'm a strong proponent for gun safety. Have you read about the dust-up between students at Colorado State University and CSU's Board of Governors over the right to carry concealed weapons on campus? CSU is one of two US universities to allow those (21 or older) with concealed carry permits to bring guns to school. Michigan State has allowed it since last June (and a Utah law bars state colleges from banning guns on campus). The Associated Students of the CSU Senate voted 21-3 to retain the right of concealed carry that's been around since 2003. The CSU Board of Governors voted 9-0 for a gun ban. The students campaigned for the right to defend themselves, citing the mass murders at Virginia Tech two years ago. A Denver Post editorial sided with the Board, citing the chances of an accidental shooting or "other problems." A final decision is due next year but the students will lose. The "enlightened" side will win, even though Virginia Tech, Denver's Columbine High and every other US school that has suffered killings on campus all had gun bans. I'm with the students. (Thanks to Monte Whaley and Joey Bunch who broke the story for the Post.)

      December 1 2009:      I've written approximately 288 opinion pieces like this one since I opened my Web site in 2000, and not a damn one of them has been about Las Vegas. I don't mean modern Las Vegas. I'm talking about the city I found when I went to work there in the 50s, right out of college, as sports editor of the Review-Journal. That city has vanished, along with many of my friends, and I have mixed memories of it. But if you tell a story about old Las Vegas, people smile and say, "I wish I'd been there." Well, maybe. The telephones in the 50s had four numbers, and if you wanted to make a call you put the receiver to your ear, fell into a chair and waited. Sometimes it took ten minutes before the operator said "Number please." I remember a rumor about a man who died of a heart attack while his wife waited for the operator. None of us at the newspaper ever tracked it down, but it sure as hell was a conversation starter. The big intersections had no traffic lights--just stop signs. Drive north or south from downtown and you'd hit dirt roads. The attitude, though, was carefree. I remember thinking how lucky I'd been to discover this little caricature of a town where everyone stayed up all night and I could have more fun in a couple of hours than I'd had in my entire life. So I stuck around, and damned if I didn't grow up with the place. By 1980, old Las Vegas was gone, and so was I.

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      November 22 2009:      There's just one time and one place where everyone in the gaming business meets to find out how the other guys do it. That would be G2E at the Las Vegas Convention Center. I started at the old IGWB show in Atlantic City in the last century, where some of the talks drew four or five listeners. But the show is a monster now and very well done, from the leadup exhortations right through to the "thank you" E-mail that hits your screen a day after the show ends. Impressive. I walked the exhibits, swapped stories with old friends, and bumped into old pal Gary Harris. The man designs slots these days and I hear he's a star. But every time I think of Gary my mind drifts back to the mid-80s when he worked for Universal Slots and I did the company's advertising. Gary and I discussed all the ads in advance, and one day he laid five ideas on me. All were well ahead of their time, but one absolutely fascinated me. The guy invented ticket in, ticket out. Maybe there were others at work on it, but Gary had the whole plan in his mind. His closing line to me was, "The machine prints you a check." Another idea was a machine that let the player win on every play or get his token back. How does the house make money? They sell the player the tokens and redeem them at 85 percent.

      November 11 2009:      What's the purpose of advertising? To sell something, you say? We're on the same page. What's the single most important part of any ad? The headline, you say? Again we agree. The best headlines are like newspaper headlines because they alert the reader to the offer and its benefits. They give you a vest pocket summary--and if you have a need or even a yen for the product or service, they draw you into the ad. But what about headlines like this one from a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal: "Don't just like." It gives you no benefits, no promises, no offer and no reason to read the ad. Welcome to "branding," a form of advertising that relies on "creativity" to lure you into copy that inevitably deals in obscurity and seldom mentions the name of the product or service. So under "Don't just like." we find "Like is watered down love. Like is mediocre. Like is wishy-washy. Artists don't suffer for the like of art. Love. Now that's powerful stuff." Okay, had enough? This is a full page ad, in color, for Blackberry. It's followed by a second full page, also in color, that mentions features, not benefits, and tells you, "The new BlackBerry is a result of loving what we do." Pure flapdoodle.

      November 1 2009:      Are you sick of Twitter? I mean, do you shout unspeakable curses and launch a virtual kick at the computer when even the sports pages mention it? Do you care about some 300-pound lineman who Twitters or Tweets or whatever they do every day? And do you throw up your hands when you see Twitter in the Wall Street Journal? The Wall Street Journal, for gosh sake. The last barrier has been breached. But there's hope. The Guardian says the latest research from the UK's Ofcom shows a drop-off of 5% in 15 to 24-year-olds using social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. This social disaster has been caused, says Ofcom, by 25 to 34 year-olds who now comprise 46% of Facebook and about the same on MySpace. The Guardian says parents and teachers are moving in fast, causing the "adolescent exodus." The main point, says James Thickett, director of market research at Ofcom, "is the profile of social networking users is getting older." As for Twitter, the editor of DM News has written of a Harvard Business School study that found "a majority of Tweeters (90%) aren't tweeting." We can only hope the 25-34 group which has moved onto Twitter will come to its senses and take up handball or bass fishing. After all, these are adults.

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      October 22 2009:      Party time at G2E and you're invited. Yes, when the former casino pros who've matriculated to Denver's G. A. Wright Marketing see an opportunity to party with casino marketing and advertising people (and old pals) they do it right. I'm talking lunch, cocktails, copies of Secrets of Casino Marketing signed by your faithful reporter, Las Vegas funnyman Louie Anderson, and probably three or four things I haven't heard about. Come on Wednesday, Nov. 18, anytime from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. and you'll find them in Room N236 in the Las Vegas Convention Center. near the exhibit hall. And let me tell you, these people are loaded with insight. Ask them a question about casino marketing and they do a club date. You want to know the most profitable ways to use the "new media?" They have a guy. You want the latest news on systems or security or the front desk. They have a guy. You want the inside on Atlantic City? They have a guy. You want some classy ad writing? They have a girl. You want knockout art and design for the casino business? They have...well, you know what I mean. Now lets talk about Louie and me for a second. I start signing and handing out "Secrets" at 2 p.m. Louie roars in at 3:30. Hell of a show. Hope I see you there.

      October 11 2009:      I met Arnie Wexler four years ago at the annual Casino Marketing Conference in Las Vegas. He's as nice a guy as you'd ever want to know and one of the most dedicated men I've ever met. I asked him to keep in touch and he's sent me at least one E-mail message a month ever since. You may not know who Arnie is because he doesn't promote himself. But for more than 38 years he's been on the same relentless quest to help and then reform compulsive gamblers. When I came into the gaming business in the 60's no programs existed to help such gamblers. But by the early 70s, Wexler and others like him began to press their cases--and casinos took note. Arnie was the executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gaming of New Jersey for eight years; he appeared on Oprah, Nightline, 48 Hours and other top shows to spread his message; he presented workshops and training seminars for Fortune 500 corporations and opened a nationwide hot line for problem gamblers at 888-Last-Bet. Along the way the gaming business fell in line behind him and the casinos spawned a line of Wexlerites who became just as dedicated as Arnie. Did he retire? Of course not. Arnie and Sheila Wexler Associates (she's his wife) are busy to this day presenting workshops and seminars on compulsive gambling addiction. I know because I read his E-mails. Thank you, my friend, and carry on.

      October 1 2009:      Before casinos caught on that the best floor promotions pay nothing but cash or (more recently) free slot play to winners, the business gave away some truly dippy stuff. I offered $100,000 in cash in the Super Sahara Celebration at Del Webb's Sahara in the 60s. But rival casinos, caught unaware by the first big floor promotion on the Strip, fought us the following year with promotion prizes that included toasters, frying pans and luggage as leaders. I should have sent them all thank-you notes. But in the 70s, one casino (The Mint in downtown Las Vegas) got my attention with a first prize almost as good as cash. My good friend Larry Close was the Mint GM, and first prize in one of his promotions was a Thompson Sub-Machinegun. You might remember this stubby, drum-fed gun as a favorite of G-Men and gangsters in the 30s. And there it was--every man's dream--up for grabs. Larry told me the Mint fielded calls about the gun every day. Hell, federal law prohibited civilians (except gangsters) from owning machineguns, so I don't know how Larry handled it. All I know was every time I went down to the Mint, a crowd had gathered around the glass locker that held the Thompson. All men, staring at that baby like it was gold. I never found out who won it. Probably a gangster.

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      September 22 2009:      Our youngest son, Troy, has been playing Fantasy Football for years. He runs a neighborhood league and has played in his fraternity league since graduation from college. So you'd think I would have--even accidentally--discovered the lure of a game that has 13 million players who spend a billion a year on it. And I didn't make up those figures. They're from the Associated Press. Naturally, casinos are into it with both feet, er, cleats. The "Fantasy Football Superdraft" in Las Vegas, Aug. 27-30, involved half the casinos on the Strip (I counted 12) and they all offered special deals for players. You could buy the Platinum Package for $99 and get three VIP parties, a tailgate party, a Draft Room and "Pool Festivities." Buy the upgrade and get a private Draft Suite. I mean, how could you draft without a private suite? The Superdraft was created by Brand Interaction Group and Bookem Danno Productions (cute). Meanwhile, says AP, Station Casinos Inc., the country's fifth largest sports book, was the first to release a betting line and take wagers based on the projected stats of Fantasy Football players. The story says a Las Vegas bettor can wager, for example, that Reggie Bush will finish with more than 16 fantasy points, or that Peyton Manning might be under 21. A 24-player lineup changes each week. My only question is, where does anyone find the time to play such a game?

      September 11 2009:      The Beatles, says the Wall Street Journal, are projected to be among the top-selling video games this year. Video games? Viacom Inc.'s MTV Games, says the Journal, is relying on the appeal of just one band with the release of "The Beatles: Rock Band." Hey, I remember these guys from 1964 when Stan Irwin booked them for one of their first US appearances at the Sahara--right under the noses of every other entertainment director on the Strip. I also remember the near riot at the Las Vegas Convention Center when they appeared. I met the boys at the plane (we sneaked them in through the old McCarran Field) and rode with them to the Sahara where a mob of teens (all girls) awaited. Nice guys and funny, too. Who knew they'd own the world one day? Meanwhile, they're standing in line in London to buy the Beatles' remastered CDs and the MTV game. And guess who's at the top of the charts in Blighty? Same four guys--minus one. MTV expects big sales, but I had to gulp when I read the price. The game and controller bundles cost $99.99 for Guitar Hero 5, but MTV wants $249.99 for "The Beatles: Rock Band." But what the hell. The administration says the recession is ending.

      September 1 2009:      Does anyone know how gambling is getting along in Russia these days? You may remember the state closed all casinos and slot halls in late June, but in a grand gesture opened up four new regions of the country where gambling will be permitted. Of course, all four regions are at least 1,000 kilometers from Moscow in places you never heard of. Still, it's okay to set up shop in Kaliningrad on the Azov Sea. Surely you know where that is. Another of the gambling regions is in the Altai area of Siberia. Two more are near North Korea and Japan. Now, the latter makes some sense. The Japanese love to gamble, Maybe they could take the ferry over--if there was a ferry. Personally, I lost faith in Russian gaming when my friend Ed Fishman came back from a trip to Moscow and told me how overeager the tax collectors were. Apparently they work in twos, are usually armed with AK-47s and waste little time arguing the amount of cash they're supposed to collect. They were particularly unpopular in Moscow, which had to close more than 500 casinos and slot joints. Well, it's okay. If they want to gamble they can fly here. Or because gamblers are such a hearty bunch they might set up slots in the Moscow subway. I wish them luck. Or perhaps "survival" would be a better word.

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      August 22 2009:      Many, if not all, of the big casinos in the US turn down the beds of important customers and place a small bit of chocolate on the pillows. Now comes word that they could actually be saving lives. "Chocolate Slashes Death Rate in Heart Attack Survivors," screamed a NewsMax bulletin that showed up on my screen. Hey, I'm always telling casinos to advertise benefits, not features, and here comes a perfect example. Can you see the headline? "Razzmatazz Casino announces an end to guest heart attacks." I am not kidding about this. The story says chocolate "cuts the rate of heart-related mortality in healthy older men and post-menopausal women." That about covers it. Of course, you have to survive a heart attack before chocolate works, which adds a little chance to the occasion. But let's look on the positive side. The Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm collaborated to discover the good news. (Why do so many medical breakthroughs occur in Sweden?). Well, no matter. But if you never get your bed turned down, be sure to pack some extra chocolate. Like the world in Woody Allen's "Sleeper," everything you thought was bad for you became good for you.

      August 11 2009:      Did you read about Germans rushing to the stores to buy every light bulb in sight. Size? Not a problem. They snap up anything on the shelf. Bulb makers are working their factories overtime and they still can't keep up. Some consumers have hundreds of bulbs stashed in their basements. One boasted of a 20-year supply. I know it sounds crazy, but you and I may be doing the same thing in a few years. The new Compact Florescent Light bulb (CFL) is upon us and the Germans don't like it one damn bit. Too bad. The government says "You vill use it." The standard incandescent bulb they've used for decades is kaput. And we'll face the same fate, because our own government has issued a similar edict. Yeah, yeah, I know the CFL will save a little energy. But I don't like the thing. It's weak, its colder and its high frequency flickering can cause headaches. If it drops and breaks in your home it spills Mercury. The Germans say it's another example of EU bureaucracy gone wild. Some have named it "light bulb socialism." It's a sad day for Germany and America when governments can force us to buy a product we don't like, for a higher price, and one that's loaded with Mercury. But it's coming.

      August 1 2009:      Every few months I set aside some time to study the tiny messages called "Terms and Conditions" that stare out from the bottoms of brochures and letters mailed to me by casinos or by friends who just like to aggravate me. They haven't changed much since the 80s. If anything, they're longer and more convoluted. Read some of these things and you'll roll your eyes. Here's one I picked from a casino mailing to my home, and this is word-for-word: This invitation and a photo I,D. must be presented at the front desk at check-in. Offer valid for one or two consecutive nights thru Dec. 22. No Saturday arrivals. Excludes holidays. Subject to availability. Advanced (cq) reservations required. No additional invitations or coupons will be issued. These offers cannot be used in conjunction with any other promotion. The dates of this offer cannot be extended or altered at any time. Management reserves the right to revoke, change, or alter any or all parts of this promotion. Must be 21 or older to redeem. Sounds like a State Department bulletin aimed at terrorists, right? Yet there it was in a casino invitation. The dismaying truth here is that the casino printed it in eight-point type, 7 1/2 inches wide, without ever thinking how many customers it might alienate. The people who published this legal brief obviously have declared war against every scammer, low-life and scofflaw to walk the earth. They're going to get every last one of them even if it drives away their best customers--and it may.

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      July 22 2009:      When the so-called "Media Elite" met a week ago in Sun Valley, Idaho, one of the first sessions focused on how to capitalize on Digital media. Twitter became a focal point, and stars such as media boss Barry Diller and cable TV executive John Malone said they didn't think it was a "natural" advertising medium. Both predicted it will be hard for Twitter to sell advertising without alienating its users. Others wondered how Twitter expects to pay its bills when its $55 Million in Venture capital runs out. Meanwhile, the editor of DM News, Cara Wood, wrote of a recent study from the Harvard Business School that found a majority of "Tweeters" (90%) aren't tweeting. "As someone who has been skeptical of the merit of the medium," Wood wrote, "I'm feeling pretty smug. DM News has been investigating the purported value of the micro-blogging site since its launch (3 years ago) and while many have told us they've built buzz, I've yet to hear marketers tie it to hard and fast ROI." Social Media Strategist Dirk Shaw of Vignette, said "Twitter is great for buzz, for driving traffic and managing brand perception, but companies must be relevant or else they'll be ignored."

      July 11 2009:      Colorado hit the casino big time, sort of, on July 2, when betting limits went from $5 to $100, Roulette and Craps became legal and closing time went from 2 a.m. to never. Thirty six casinos in Black Hawk, Central City and Cripple Creek went completely nuts. Okay, so a $100 limit is nothing special in Las Vegas. But in Colorado it's like being let out of jail. The Denver Post unleashed three front page stories. Radio stations sent newsmen for first hand accounts. A movie star threw out the first pair of dice at one casino, and a reporter at another breathlessly announced that for the first time, casino restaurants would be serving breakfast. One of the larger casinos offered $5 in cash to new player club signups. Central City relaxed its building height requirements that allowed no casinos taller than 53 feet--the exact height of the revered Teller House Hotel. Another casino offered a new Jeep as first prize in a drawing, and gave its players an entry for every 10 points they scored (unheard of in the days of card swipes). On an odd note, worries about cheaters abounded. Casinos hired more security, brought in more cameras (1,500 between the Gilpin and the Lodge) and one hired an expert from Harrah's Las Vegas whose specialty is catching cheaters. In the last two years, said the Post, just two of 13 cheating complaints led to arrests.

      July 1 2009:      A couple of interesting stories you probably didn't see unless you take the Wall Street Journal: Fred Willharm, described by the Journal as a real- estate investor from Franklin, Tenn., made his TV debut on YouTube with a video he named "The Tennessee Credit Card Massacre." Incensed when card-issuers jacked up his interest rate, Mr. Willharm "sliced, drilled and shredded" his credit cards, then regretted that he couldn't blow up the cards instead. He's one of dozens, says the Journal, who have posted online videos of a "plasectomy," a term coined by Fox radio talk show host Dave Ramsey...the advertising industry, meanwhile, is furious over the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act that gives the FDA power to control the marketing and advertising of smokes. No giveaways of non-tobacco items with the purchase of a tobacco product, and no outdoor ads within a thousand yards of schools and playgrounds. The ad industry says it's the most restrictive advertising bill ever passed for a legal product. Magazines will be particularly hurt says the Journal. Those with large readerships under the age of 18 won't be allowed tobacco ads in color--just black and white ads the business calls a "tombstone." In the first quarter of 2009, ad spending dropped 21%. How do you like the new regulations flowing out of Washington now?

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      June 22 2009:      I remember when every major resort casino on the Las Vegas Strip had a "line" of beautiful girls that opened every main room show. Their routines lasted as long as 15 minutes as they showed off their impossible bodies and remarkable dancing skills. But one by one, casinos eliminated the lines of Las Vegas. Now there remains only a single Las Vegas show populated by beautiful dancers and showgirls. It's Jubilee! at Bally's Las Vegas. Really kind of sad to see such a stunning tradition melt away. Showgirls usually stood 5-8 and up, and at least one famous director required his girls to be 6-feet in heels. These tall young beauties were carefully scrutinized for imperfections. One director took no one unless her ears laid flat alongside her head. Arms, legs and breasts had to be near perfect. And finally, showgirls had to be graceful. The qualifications for dancers were quite different. Most saw dancing as a career, and the Strip and Lake Tahoe used to pay well for the best ones. While showgirls exposed their breasts in production numbers, dancers never did. And their workload far exceeded that of showgirls. I knew both, of course, in my 18 years at Del Webb's Sahara. Our dancers had to master all sorts of odd routines--one in which they maneuvered their way about the stage atop 5-foot-high wooden balls. One day I met a dancer from the Sahara at Lake Tahoe--a young beauty who has never changed in 37 years of marriage. I consider myself very, very, very lucky.

      June 11 2009:      I'm speaking at the 5th annual Casino Marketing Conference, July 20-22, at Paris Las Vegas. And while the topic is direct mail, it's unlike any speech I've ever given about this most effective of all casino marketing techniques. Casino direct mail has changed so much since I wrote my first "personal letter" in 1965 that it's virtually unrecognizable. And direct response advertising has vanished. Personal letters once were mainstays. Now you seldom see them. Oh, you find copy in almost every casino mailing. But it's short copy, all features and claims--the kind used by general ad agencies that believe no one reads anymore. And the copy is about the casino, not about the customer. When direct marketing surged in the 80s, generalists soon called for the "integrated agency," in which direct and general were to be equals. And the integrated agency happened, but traditional direct marketers soon became second class citizens in the casino business. What caused it? I'll cover several factors in my talk, but here's one. Direct marketing art directors always enhanced the long copy typical of its writers. They studied reading comprehension and type styles, and frequently used coupon offers. Generalists continued with the hard-to-read reverse-outs, indirect headlines and puzzling illustrations and pictures they preferred. And their art directors won the battle because so many clients never understood the difference.

      June 1 2009:      Change is unrelenting. But who ever thought it would happen to Max Factor cosmetics? Procter & Gamble said it was not only taking Max Factor off the shelves, it was taking it out of America. The brand still does well in the UK and it's buck in Russia, but it's finished here. Max worked as a beautician for Russian royalty, the Romanovs, writes Fred Basten in his The Man Who Changed the Faces of the World. But in 1904 he escaped to the US and opened a cosmetics store in Los Angeles. Nice women, in those days, never wore makeup. You couldn't even say the word in polite society until Max hit America and designed faces for Katharine Hepburn, Rita Hayworth, Bette Davis and comparable knockouts. He created makeup for silent films, then for talkies and finally for color motion pictures. If you like to watch the old black and white movies, you'll always see his name in the credits. Same for color until Max died in 1938. My parents were vaudevillians and my mother refused to use anything but Max Factor makeup--and no wonder. Basten's book says Max created "firsts" in false eyelashes, lip gloss, foundation, eye shadow, the eyebrow pencil, water-resistant mascara, water-resistant makeup, color harmony and celebrity-endorsed cosmetics.

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      May 22 2009:      It came from outer space. Really. In 1976, as marketing director at Del Webb's Sahara Las Vegas, I investigated UFO reports in my spare time. And the strangest came from entertainer Johnny Sands. On a dark January night, Sands' car stalled on the Blue Diamond road outside Las Vegas. When he stepped outside and opened the hood, a huge, silent craft appeared overhead. It looked like a blimp, only longer, Sands said. The craft disappeared behind a hill and two human-like creatures approached Sands. They stood about 5-7, and seemed proportioned like humans. Their eyes were set close together under large, hairless heads. Protruding from their neck were appendages Sands described as "gills." They "spoke" to Sands, apparently by telepathy, and he was able to answer back. But the two humanoids soon turned away and vanished. I arranged for Sands to take a polygraph test, which showed no evidence of deception. The operator said Sands was truthful in his answers. My story appeared in the Star tabloid and various UFO newsletters. Now thirty-two years zip past. On May 4, came a letter from Sands, whose case will appear on the History Channel's "UFO Hunters" series. I sent producer Jonathan Walton all the information I had kept on Sands. Can't wait to see the show.

      May 11 2009:      I phoned my local Chevvy dealer yesterday to see if I could bring my 2003 Trailblazer in for service. "Sure," he said. "First come, first served starting at 7 a.m." I was about to ask what he had in mind if GM files for bankruptcy, but I thought better of it. No need to agitate the guy. I bought the car in 2002 and paid it off in three years. The mechanics stare at it in wonderment when they see it's been driven only 31,670 miles. "Just broken in, " one of them told me. "Like new," said another. Listen, when you have a paid-off car with low mileage you take care of it. So I'm not falling for the latest government plan to buy back the "clunkers" and "gas guzzlers" for up to $4,500. The last thing I need is another car payment. And to tell you the truth, small cars and hybrids are not for me. They're terrific on mileage but not so good when they get smacked. I've seen the wrecks on the evening news, so I'll keep my Trailblazer. It's an SUV, but in Colorado I'm among friends. You drive the Rockies in wintertime, you need an SUV. Period. I tow small cars and hybrids out of the snow. That's as close as I'll ever get to one.I phoned my local Chevvy dealer yesterday to see if I could bring my 2003 Trailblazer in for service. "Sure," he said. "First come, first served starting at 7 a.m." I was about to ask what he had in mind if GM files for bankruptcy, but I thought better of it. No need to agitate the guy. I bought the car in 2002 and paid it off in three years. The mechanics stare at it in wonderment when they see it's been driven only 31,670 miles. "Just broken in, " one of them told me. "Like new," said another. Listen, when you have a paid-off car with low mileage you take care of it. So I'm not falling for the latest government plan to buy back the "clunkers" and "gas guzzlers" for up to $4,500. The last thing I need is another car payment. And to tell you the truth, small cars and hybrids are not for me. They're terrific on mileage but not so good when they get smacked. I've seen the wrecks on the evening news, so I'll keep my Trailblazer. It's an SUV, but in Colorado I'm among friends. You drive the Rockies in wintertime, you need an SUV. Period. I tow small cars and hybrids out of the snow. That's as close as I'll ever get to one.

      May 1 2009:      Researchers at Northumbria University in the UK have discovered red wine can make you a math genius. Another study from Mt. Sanai School of Medicine showed red wine fights cancer, diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer's Disease. Both attribute these miracles to ResveratroI, a chemical found in red wine, blueberries, cranberries and peanuts. I don't know why these kinds of studies always come out of schools no one has ever heard of. In the Northumbria tests, half the subjects guzzled red wine and the other half took placebos. Have you ever in your entire life met anyone who couldn't tell the difference between red wine and a placebo? "Additional tests,' said the story on NewsMax, "will seek to discover the optimal dose needed for resveratrol's brain-boosting effects." Hey, I volunteer for the additional tests. Where the hell is Northumbria? Of course, you can always eat blueberries. Last time I looked, these little blue devils cost $4.99 for an 8-oz. box. So forget that and buy peanuts. A bag a day probably would work. Believe me, they're really good with red wine.

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      April 22 2009:      Professor I. Nelson Rose says we're in a depression. So who dares to argue with the world's leading authority on gambling law, a consultant and expert witness for governments and industry? Not me. In his latest column, Rose says the difference between recession and depression is like the difference between neurosis and psychosis, then adds the legal gaming industry is facing a psychotic global economy. Rose says economic depressions have immediate impacts on gaming law (some casinos have already hired him to advise them on bankruptcy procedures) and deflation soon sets in. He barrels through the gloomy statistics about casino companies that no longer exist, about an Indian casino that put in Class II slots so it wouldn't have to pay California 25% of its machine revenue, about the business slumps in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, but does end his gaming litany with hope. Some states actively seek gambling because they see it as a "painless tax." Internet poker may come to California. The government is backing off its opposition to Internet gaming. New Jersey may roll back its casino smoking ban. I met Nelson in the mid-80s in Atlantic City, sat in one of his classes, knew he'd be a winner. Hello, casinos? He's the best.

      April 11 2009:      Big trouble. Bar business has tailed off--the first decline since 1995, says the Wall Street Journal. Total liquor sales rose only 1.3% by volume last year, slowest rate in 10 years. Sales are down in New York and Florida. The recession? Sure, but that's just part of the problem. Horrified liquor companies have discovered more and more consumers stay way from bars and entertain in their homes. On top of that, analysts point out liquor is more expensive than beer and wine. But the big distilleries are fighting back with pre-made drinks that are easy to serve on the kitchen table. You can buy margaritas and wine in boxes now. Just slip them into your refrigerator. The Journal says Brown-Forman, the maker of Jack Daniel's whisky, is about to release prepared cocktails made with its Southern Comfort whisky-flavored liqueur. And Diageo is about to flood the US with Smirnoff Tuscan Lemonade and Captain Morgan Long Island iced tea. I hope this news never reaches Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Too many bartenders are out of work already. And come to think of it, my father-in-law and I used to drink in bars. Now we do it in a swing on his front porch. This could get bad. Real bad.

      April 1 2009:      In one of my past careers I became a boxing judge--and a pretty good one. I worked several world championship matches and a whacking number of other pro and amateur matches in Las Vegas in the early 60s. My title fights included Gene Fullmer versus Dick Tiger and Fullmer against Benny "Kid" Paret; the third match between Emile Griffith and Luis Rodriguez, and the Harold Johnson-Willie Pastrano lightheavyweight championship bout--a truly memorable occasion. Willie's supporters jammed the Convention Center, and even though I always tried to block out the crowd, I couldn't help but be aware of the screaming at every move Willie made. But at the end, I thought Johnson was a clear winner. I didn't hesitate to give him my vote. I was astounded when the referee and the second judge voted the other way. The press called it the worst decision of 1963--and it was. Talking with my boxing expert friend Jimmy Jacobs a few years later, he told me that to Harold, I became a hero. According to Jimmy, Harold said, "John Romero is the only honest boxing judge in Las Vegas." Of course, judgment calls produce boxing winners, and honesty has nothing to do with it. But I did have quick eyes then. After that, whenever I went to NY or Philly, I tried to find Harold. No luck. If you see him, pass along my regards.

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      March 22 2009:      Today, I'd really like to write about the squabbling in Washington. Or about the $9.3 trillion debt that congressional auditors say we may face for the next 10 years. Or about Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid's letter to the President asking for clarification of a provision that restricts casinos from using federal stimulus funds. Or about the Pentagon bracing for a steep reduction in military spending at a time when China and Russia are racing to see who overtakes us first. Or how Detroit automakers, in the words of Joseph White, "Went from Kings of the Road to Roadkill." Or about Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's letter to the President that ended by asking "...you and members of Congress to refrain from calling out individual cities or destinations, which serves no purpose and only reinforces outdated stereotypes." Or about the neighbors who threatened executives of AIG because they accepted bonuses that the company promised them a year earlier. Or about Colorado casinos--now there's a story. In contrast to most of the gaming industry, Colorado's 40 casinos are hiring, and in February they reported $57.3 million in revenue compared to $57.9 the previous February. I knew if I looked long enough I'd find good news.

      March 11 2009:      As I read through Dennis Conrad's new book, Conrad on Casino Marketing, I put a check mark by lines I thought were particularly important to our business. I wound up with a book full of check marks. I should have used invisible ink. But I expected it. Dennis rose from Keno writer to casino executive to owning his own business, Raving Consulting of Reno. The guy's mind is like a library. He just sits down, pulls out a piece of information, and lays it on you. Here are some of the lines I checked. "You start with the gaming customer and work back...when you give your customers honest information on your games, they become confident, feeling less like suckers, and will be likely to try a new game and play it longer...it may surprise you that your customers don't mind losing if only they can win along the way and play for awhile...the numerous examples of Indian casinos with "no alcohol" or "limited alcohol" policies help to counteract (alcohol's) negative image--and response to this issue is voluntary...why is customer service training one of the first budget items to be cut when business slows?...where possible, segregate the smoking and non-smoking areas in a design-friendly way that tells your non-smoking customers, 'the air is different in here'...the current model pushes casino hosts to become " independent contractors" instead of cooperative members of a high-powered hosting team...the GM should dedicate time to listening to live, breathing casino customers."

      March 1 2009:      The mail industry, according to DM News, faces "an uncertain future." The well-known USPS deficit of $2.8 billion seems insurmountable, total mail volume has decreased by 9 billion, and rate hikes are on the way. Meanwhile, says the magazine, the volume produced on digital presses will grow as much as 3% a year to 2013. DM News didn't say casinos are nervous, but I'm here to tell you they're not too happy about it. What to do? We can all think of the obvious, but some solutions elude the mind. Creating extra value at a small cost is one of them. When the competition lowers room prices, it's tough to hold your ground. The instinct is to match him, especially in today's marketplace. But there's an alternative--and it's to hold the line on prices but do something special for your guests--something to give you a memorable edge over the cut rate guy. When I was Marketing Director of the Sahara Las Vegas, we telephoned guests only minutes after they reached their rooms. After a warm welcome, the operators would say, "The Sahara wants to send up a drink for you two, compliments of the house. What will you have?" Ten minutes later two free drinks arrived at their door. You'd be amazed how much talk this created, and how many firm friendships it formed. P.S. We never cut prices.

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      February 22 2009:      I had to laugh. Some Representative wants to get steroid-using baseball players up before Congress again. With the recession and assorted international problems, can anyone tell me what purpose that would serve except a picture of the Rep in the home town newspaper? In the Rocky Mountain news, a sports columnist suggests Bud Selig, the baseball commissioner, declare steroid-era numbers will no longer be compared to those of the pre-steroid era. Why should steroid-era stats stay on the books at all, says my wife Robin? She's come up with a common sense solution guaranteed to solve the steroid problem in two seconds. The commissioner, she says, should simply erase the stats that players piled up when they were on steroids. For Alex Rodriguez, the stats for 2001, 2002 and 2003 would be wiped from the books. All those home runs and RBIs, gone overnight. Other players in the 104 who have admitted the use of steroids would also have their stats removed--as would anyone in the future who gets caught. "If a child is hurting himself by playing with a toy, you take it away," says Robin. Wow, would she shake up baseball if they made her commissioner. Players live and die with their stats. They're the clubs they use to hammer out those multi-million dollar salaries. I agree with Robin. Nothing wrong with multi-million salaries, but if the stats that helped earn all that dough came on steroids, wipe them out. Comment, Mr. Rodriguez?

      February 11 2009:      I drove to Denver for a couple of appointments the morning after the Super Bowl, radio blasting as I listened to the local newsies pick their "favorite" TV ad. It's always kind of funny because the radio people all believe the purpose of advertising is to entertain. Then on came a local ad pro who praised the Super Bowl as "A celebration of advertising." Unfortunately, he left out a word., He should have added "agencies" to the quote, for they're the major beneficiaries. The unfortunate clients, like the radio newsies, also believe ads are meant to entertain. So the agency gets paid, NBC gets paid and the sponsors lose, oh, three million or so, and no one remembers the company name. "Best-liked" was an unfunny Doritos spot where a guy shatters a snack machine with a glass globe, then his partner throws one and hits the boss in the crotch (a staple of "America's Funniest Videos.") Otherwise, same old junk. Here are five ads. Can you name the sponsors? (1) After introducing himself as a TV star, Alec Baldwin launches onto a humorless diatribe against television (2) Humans look on in wonder as monkeys service a car and one kisses his keeper (3) A boy using a bath towel as his cape is followed by Spiderman, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Popeye (4) A boy rescues a bowl of goldfish from a burning building and grows up to be a doctor who has no trouble getting a car. (5) A huge moose head protrudes from a bookcase, then the camera moves behind the bookcase and we see the rest of the moose, watched over by a guy who would like to have a better job than watching the hind end of a moose. In order, Hulu, Castrol Edge, Universal Orlando Resort, Cars.Com, Monster.Com.. P.S. My wife liked the Clydesdale fetch.

      February 1 2009:      The year 1986, was the breakout year for direct marketing. Oh, it had been around for a while, but general advertising had all the business then and most direct marketers seemed content to hunker in the environs and make no trouble. A few of us were screaming our heads off about direct's superiority--but the plain fact was nobody knew who in the hell we were or what we could accomplish. But one day the late David Ogilvy changed everything with a famous speech to French direct marketers in Paris. "You generalists," he said, "are the glamor boys and girls of the advertising community...you regard advertising as an art form and expect your clients to finance expressions of your genius...in Direct, our clients don't give a damn if we win awards...they pay us to sell their products--nothing else...you pride yourselves on your originality, which is the most dangerous word in advertising...when you write an advertisement you want everyone to congratulate you on your creativity...when sales go up, you claim the credit, and when sales go down you blame the product...your favorite music is the applause of your own copywriters and art directors...our favorite music is the ring of the cash register...we sell, or else." Can you imagine two full pages of this sort of thing? The speech ran in all the ad magazines and overnight, it seemed, general advertising had absorbed a grievous wound from which it has been slow to recover. Thank you, Mr. Ogilvy.

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      January 22 2009:      I know, I know. It's hardly fair. But every year I warn you well in advance I'll be quizzing you about Super Bowl TV spots, and every year you blow it. You recall the spot but not the sponsor. Kind of embarrassing--not for you but for the rock-headed ad agencies and clients who lay out all that dough and get zip for it. Fifty million people see the spot and only 28 can remember the sponsor. Something wrong there. As in past years, I'll pick five or six spots, write a short description of each and ask you to name the sponsor. For example, here are two spots I used last year: (1) A fancy new car speeds through the French countryside. It halts when it reaches the French army, circa 1814, and Napoleon steps out. (2) A gorgeous girl and a bunch of lizards hoof it to the original choreography of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." One of the lizards looks like Jackson. Ridiculous stuff, isn't it? And I know you have no idea that No. 1 was for Garmin, and No. 2 was for Life Water. So take notes if you want to, but you have no chance. I win every year, which is a tribute to the good old ad agency standby of "branding," in which the client loses his rear end but loves the spot, and the agency throws a party and the writers laugh themselves silly. . Under TIP OF THE WEEK:

      January 11 2009:      : Las Vegas has been successful through all sorts of problems including recessions, floods, bad movies and bad actors. It's plowed through everything fate could throw at it, breathed fire at those who maligned it, winked at the stock market and survived Howard Hughes. This makes guys in the "mainstream press" hate us. It's not an overt hate, of course, but in their busy minds, revenge quietly simmers. Why? Because of all the stories the press grinds out, it's happiest covering the heroes-to-bums angle. Gloom, doom, failure, catastrophe, fizzle, flop--they love it. So I smiled when I saw the AP's Jan. 1 headline, "Slump Means Identity Crisis for Las Vegas." In an effort to put down the whole city, they interviewed three or four citizens who had fallen on bad times and tried to make them represent the other million or so. The first guy came to town to be an Elvis impersonator, made a lot of money, bought Graceland, and lost everything when the foreclosure mess started. "I think it's become an unforgiving town, " he said. "I feel sorry for the fool who comes here to try to make it." The second subject was a 52-year-old woman who has worked on the Strip most of her life and now says, "I don't know what happened . It's never been like this." In a third interview we find a man who insists the recession "destroys the illusion of prosperity." So what's with Las Vegas? Did they close the place? Is there a happy soul anywhere on the Strip? Is a collapse imminent? Hey, I was there the other day and it looked pretty damn successful. And still a blast.

      January 1 2009:      Brian Clark of the Denver Ricky Mountain News is one clever guy. He hordes weird (but true) sports stories--and just released his favorite howlers for the lousy year we swept out on Dec. 31. His title, "Oddballs 2008." And away we go: a 15-year-old Chicago high school sophomore was told to remove her replica Cubs jersey because the dean thought the last name on the back, Fukudome, sounded too much like a profanity...Tampa Bay pitcher Andy Sonnanstine was treated for an ear infection after falling asleep wearing in-ear iPod headphones...upset when the Italian soccer club Juventus loaned him to a rival team, Tiago Mendes locked club president Giovanni Gigli in the bathroom...when Kid Rock and John Daily teamed up in the Buick Open pro-am, Daly borrowed a can of suds from the Kid and used it as a tee on the seventh hole...Ultimate Fighting Championship participant Jon Koppenhaver legally changed his name to War Machine...a Florida urologist invented the UroClub, a portable urinal shaped like a golf club and equipped with a removable golf towel as a privacy shield...in England, 13 golf balls were removed from the stomach of as Labrador Retriever who often prowled the course...and the wife of one of China's top TV sports anchors interrupted a Olympic media event, grabbed a microphone and accused her husband of adultery. Thanks as usual, Brian.

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      December 22 2008:      Full disclosure: I haven't read Malcolm Gladwell's new book,"Outliers: The Story of Success." But I do have a full page review from the Rocky Mountain News. And if the reviewer is correct in his analysis, Gladwell believes "accomplishment relies, to a large part, on a cosmic lottery, on the type of dumb luck that offers no explanation or justification." In pursuit of this eccentric theory, Gladwell refers to the successes of everyone from Bill Gates and J. Robert Oppenheimer to The Beatles, and the special opportunities and advantages that made them legends. This finger in the eye of an American dream that rewards hard work limits success only to those who shake the world. But I thought of a man I knew who came to this country penniless, a victim of the Mexican revolution that took his father's life in 1913. He spoke no English, had no skills, worked to help support the family instead of completing high school, and was the recipient of beatings from Texas youths who disliked Mexicans. But this boy never turned and ran. He met the "cosmic lottery" head on, had more bad luck than "dumb luck," but refused to fail. Eventually he toured the world as a vaudevillian, opened a flourishing real estate business, was named to the board of directors of a savings and loan corporation, raised a family and amassed a sum of money that, in its day, was impressive. Are not men such as my father "successful?" There are countless others like him, Mr. Gladwell. Perhaps you hadn't noticed.

      December 11 2008:      I'm scanning my email when a subject line ("12 Copywriting Secrets") leaps out at me. No writer could resist such a declaration. All of us want to see what the other guys are doing. So I opened Target Marketing magazine's Tipline and read Robert Lerose's piece. The man is good. All twelve are solid, proven tactics. But one in particular, "Tell a story," was as sweet an explanation of the craft as I've ever seen. Because it's my favorite, I've devoted entire columns to storytelling. I knew Bill Jayme, the master of the story-as-sales-argument, and I have four or five examples of Martin Conroy's classic Wall Street Journal control. But trying to explain storytelling to clients isn't always easy. Here's how Robert summed it up: "Bad copy starts with the product. Good copy starts with the prospect. Great copy starts with the prospect's emotions. Do what method actors do when they take on a role. Get in the skin of your prospects. See the world through their eyes. Figure out what keeps them awake at night. Once you do that, it will be easier to reach them on a gut level. Prospects buy with their emotions, then justify it with their reason." You nailed it, Robert. robertler@optonline.net

      December 1 2008:      Was G2E at the Las Vegas Convention Center down this year, or was it my imagination? In past shows I had to weave through the crowds in the exhibit hall. This time I could walk the isles in a straight line. But fun, nevertheless, and a terrific show. I spent most of my time at G. A. Wright Marketing, just off the exhibit floor, signing my Secrets of Casino Marketing and swapping casino stories with a steady stream of visitors. G. A. Wright Marketing, based in Denver, is composed of ex-casino executives and direct marketers and has concentrated primarily on Native American casinos. Counting clients, special arrangements and projects, they serve an astounding 24 Indian casinos. CEO Gary Wright, a West Pointer and ex-Army Ranger, is personally involved in a burgeoning campaign to teach young Tribal prospects the fundamentals of casino marketing. The five-month program also includes Denver University's Business School. The agency currently runs a full page profile each month in Indian Gaming magazine featuring Indian and G. A. Wright gaming execs. The company is poised to enter Nevada and other US gaming areas. They're good.

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      November 22 2008:      Can you imagine running a 74,000 sq. ft. casino that's so big and so powerful and so well-liked that it had no competition to speak of in the Metro Milwaukee area? And can you imagine this casino loaded with Las Vegas table games, around 3,000 slots, poker, Bingo and Off Track Betting? Plus a "working relationship" with 20 of the city's best hotels and Inns, and its own shuttle system that picks up guests and sweeps them into the casino? And with the nearest meaningful competition in Chicago, about 95 miles away? Meet the Potawatomi Bingo Casino in downtown Milwaukee, a Native American star that's pure Las Vegas. I had the pleasure of meeting Cassie Rakoczy, the marketing director, and spending two days with her staff. They're all damn good. The staff publishes Ante, a 26-page, 4-color magazine every month for a players club named The Fire Keepers (which is the meaning of Potawatomi). The casino offers free craps lessons, free slot tournaments, and in July paid off 3,436 slot jackpots of $1,200 or more--including one at $75,000. At the end of October they gave away $250,000 toward a new home. And there's a semicircular theater, a private corporate meeting area and the Tribal Room, with it's 50-foot-high glass windows overlooking the city. Impressive.

      November 11 2008:      Last month I wrote an opinion piece I named "Everyone's a prospect to the big E-mailers." I took a few shots at the dumb subject lines on the tons of E-Mail I've started to receive over the past few months, had a little fun, and moved on. But a pal of mine also on AOL phoned me. Said his E-Mail had tripled and he couldn't remember authorizing any of it, and did I have the same problem? And as he was speaking I realized I did. I'm getting stuff I wouldn't subscribe to in a hundred years, and all of a sudden I'm mad about it. I began to pay more attention to the opt out language, and much of it said they sent it because I had asked to be put on their list. Would I ask to attend the University of Phoenix? Would I sign up for a seniors dating service? Do I need a prepaid debit card? So who put my name on all these ridiculous lists? All I can tell you is a lot of them came with an opt out bulletin from AOL right under the opening logo. That makes me suspicious--of AOL Could they have sold my name and address/ I'll never know. There's a new opt out procedure, too. You have to give your E-mail address before they remove you. I'm suspicious of that, too. The only answer is to change to a new service, get a new E-mail address, and start over. And I'm damn close to that now.

      November 1 2008:      The world's largest gaming show, G2E, opens a five-day run in Las Vegas on Nov. 16. Your faithful reporter will be there, searching for my pals among the 10,247 booths in the Convention Center. All right, so I exaggerated. But "The Show" really is big. You can search the aisles for an hour and cover only half the room. No, I mean that. I used to walk the floor with friends who knew where they were going. That was fun--until they retired. So now I just wander until I accidentally find the booth I'm looking for. It takes longer, but it actually looks like I know what I'm doing. Sometimes I'll see friends looking for a certain booth number and they'll ask if I know where it is. I just say, "Follow me," as if I could stroll right to it, and I can if they want to follow me for two-three hours. My wife says I'm directionally challenged. That's ridiculous. We live near Denver, with the Rocky Mountains to the west, so I always know where I am. Can you find west when you're inside the G2E show? Of course not. So if you see me there, please say hello. But if you're looking for a certain booth, your guess is as good as mine.

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      October 22 2008:      If my daily load of E-mail is an example, the people who send it seem to have the impression that anyone who's online is a prospect. Talk about wasting money--I must get some of the silliest subject lines in the business. As I move through the stack, killing almost everything except notes from clients and friends, I actually stop now and then to marvel at the junk I'm sent. Like "Quit your boring job--be a Google millionaire." I mean, who are these people trying to reach? In today's economy you're lucky if you have a job, even a boring job. As for the chances of Google making you a millionaire, nil. Another worthless line is "Looking for a credit card?" Oh, sure. Send me five or six. Then we find, "Many career possibilities in crime scene investigation field." With three shows already on the tube, I don't doubt that for a minute. A new one is "Bad news about toxins." You mean there was good news about toxins and I missed it? All right, try this one: "Borrowing has never been easier." So that's why the government just handed out 700 billion to all those banks. And finally we have,"Explore the world in 2009--2,500 savings." I had no idea so many people wanted to tour the world during an international banking crisis. I knew all that stuff about the trillions lost on the stock market was nonsense.

      October 11 2008:      The World Series looms and I haven't told my annual insane but true baseball story. I know this one's true because I wasn't lynched. It happened when I was official scorer for the old Class C Las Vegas Wranglers. Pitcher Rollie Merrill starts against Mexicali. The first Mexicali hitter grounds toward second. The ball bounces off a diving fielder's glove. Base hit, I rule it. Even a perfect stop would have left the fielder flat on his face, unable to throw to first. Boos from the Las Vegas fans, but the six guys in the press box all like my call. The game reaches the fifth inning and Merrill hasn't allowed another hit. Guys in the stands start to yell at me. Three of the press box guys now think my call should have been error, not hit. Seventh inning. Now even the players are furious. People are shaking their fists at me. All the guys in the press box have turned against me. I'm mortified. Ninth inning. Two outs. Now the entire stadium is against me--the jerk who is about to cost the pitcher a no-hitter. Last batter for Mexicali. Strike one, strike two. Here comes Merrill's curve for the final out. The pinch hitter leaps back, the bat falls from his hands and by accident strikes the ball, which loops into center field for a clean hit. The crowd leaves without a word. The guys in the press box now agree with my call. From then on, if the first hit in the game isn't a clean one, I call it an error. I get booed for that, too.

      October 1 2008:      My pal, the Amazing Kreskin, is revving up a new reality TV series called POI (Persons Of Interest). As producer Katy Wallin says, "There are similarities with a new CBS show named 'The Mentalist,' but there's one major difference. POI is not fiction. It stars the REAL mentalist." In the pilot, Kreskin helps police solve the case of an Indiana college student who disappeared in 2002. In the series, he'll do similar work. Can Kreskin really help solve a case a week? Listen, this man can spot a woman in his audience, ask her to stand, and tell her the numbers on her driver's license. Is it a Minnesota license? Yes, it it. Does she have a sister named Dorothy? Yes, she does. He could go on, but it might be embarrassing. He can pick up a deck of cards, shuffle them one time and proclaim one is missing. It is. In special engagements, he asks that his check be hidden somewhere in the room or theater--and if he can't find it he'll forfeit the money. Does he always find it? Of course. And for all I know, he wears his Superman costume under his stage clothes. Do you think this man would attempt a reality show like POI unless he knew he could come up with clues and solutions? Watch for POI.

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      September 22 2008:      Seen any casino widgets lately? I haven't, but I don't race around casino Web sites looking for them. But here's a prediction: in about nothing flat, every casino site will have a cute little widget, pushing the brand. Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research says, "Widgets are great--if your objective is encouraging word of mouth." I agree with him, but how do you track word of mouth for effectiveness? These little bits of code have taken on a life of their own. DM News reports National Geographic magazine, about the last publication you can think of to embrace these pint-sized applications, has developed more than 15 of them for Facebook users and other social networks. A National Geo executive says the objective is to "reach key influencers who will interact with the brand." Interact how? Buy a magazine subscription? I doubt it. Like viral and mobile, if you're not hip to the teenage gadget mentality that drives digital media these days, you're just out of touch with the world. DM News also says, " Leveraging social media now goes far beyond simply having a Facebook page or a MySpace account." National Geo--can you beat that? When I was a kid we used to sneak into drugstores just to look at the pictures.

      September 11 2008:      When I was in the business full time at the Sahara Las Vegas, the casino guys always worried about players who tried to cheat the table games. They were pretty good at spotting them, too. But as I recall, we never had many problems with guys who wouldn't pay their markers. We had a full time collection office in Los Angeles, with a tough guy named Mel Prell in charge. He was, shall we say, hard to refuse. So I wonder how the old casino bosses and Mel himself would react to the guy in England who just escaped a debt of two million pounds. A high court rejected the Aspinall casino's attempt to collect the dough from Fouad al-Zayat because the casino allowed him unlawful credit under the Gaming Act. Aspinall's said al-Zayat drew four house check for $500,000 pounds each and lost the whole works. But al-Zayat became furious when the house wouldn't change croupiers as he requested, so he wouldn't pay back the money. But he apparently did talk the casino into accepting his personal check for the two million pending settlement of the dispute. The judge ruled this transaction was unlawful credit, so al-Zayat is free and clear. Bet he won't get a comp at Aspinall's next time.

      September 1 2008:      Maybe I'm wrong. But to me, the opening and closing ceremonies in the Beijing Olympics were like a big budget science fiction movie. Thousands of guys, all the same size and all with the same faces, beating drums, shimmying up pagodas and flying around on wires. "Only North Korea could have done it better," said the man in charge of the ceremonies. "Their uniformity is unbelievable." I read newspaper stories afterwards that praised China for opening up the country to the world. So how did I get the opposite impression? Maybe it was because the Beijing police had three small areas set aside for "Protests." The Chinese people who tried to use them were arrested. Maybe it was because the government announced that all venues were sold out, and you could see empty seats at every event. Turned out the government mistrusted large crowds and simply held out large group of tickets. Maybe it was all the goose-stepping soldiers. But like I said, maybe I'm wrong. I have a friend who took his wife and two young children to Beijing and said they had a marvelous time. They went to the Great Wall, saw some of the competition, and sent us dozens of beautiful pictures. And I have to admit the track and swimming venues were the best I'd ever seen--and I've been to three Olympics. Still, the weirdness remains.

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      August 22 2008:      When I see a newspaper story that makes me grit my teeth, I can't hold back. I fire up my antique Mac and pound out a letter to the editor. Because I spent several years in the business as an editor, I'm particularly incensed when I see reporters jump on amateur athletes as if making a mistake now and then was cause for mockery. So when my favorite newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, hectored our Olympic girl gymnasts for losing to China, here's the note I sent the sports editor: "Re Clay Latimer's piece on US female gymnasts in the Olympics ("US women get left at the falter") on Aug. 13. Pretty cute stuff, Clay. You really made a bunch of teenage kids look bad. "Rattled," you wrote. "Stumbling, bumbling, unraveled." A "meltdown" in which "several members wept." And "Flop house," what a neat headline. Any American who watched our girls lose to China was disappointed, but you seemed to take it personally. These are not "women" as the headline roared, but young girls who have trained for years, who have sacrificed to make themselves into champions, who have on some nights been the best in the world. But to you they were bums who couldn't get out of their own way. Pro athletes who make millions are fair game. But kids who have lived a dream, who have risen to the top of American sports, who have made all of us so proud of them and of our country, and who managed 'only' a silver medal, don't deserve to be ridiculed." P.S. The Rocky Mountain News printed the letter, together with several similar letters from outraged readers. Yes!

      August 11 2008:      Can you imagine an America without newspapers? And without magazines? Those who proclaimed it could never happen should think again. Some experts see newspapers "bottoming out" in another three or four years--and no one knows exactly how deep the bottom will be. And when the Audit Bureau of Circulation gave its mid-year report a few days ago, one magazine industry newsletter called the drop in revenue "unprecedented." But newspapers appear to be in far deeper trouble. The New York Times reports that ad sales are worst in California and Florida because problems in the housing market have killed real estate ads. The San Francisco Chronicle, according to Times reporter Richard Perez-Pena, is losing $1 million dollars a week. Newspaper ad revenue fell 8% last year. This year it's already 12% below that. One industry analyst says closures and bankruptcies are "inevitable." Advertising has been flowing to the Internet for more than a decade, says the Times, but the rush to digital picked up last year. Of course, some say the Net will help newspapers by pulling in more readers. Maybe, but I wouldn't bet on it. Get ready for a new society that gets its news via mobile phones--a society where only squares read newspapers and magazines.

      August 1 2008:      The news from China was disappointing before the Beijing Olympics even started. Can you believe the government struck dog meat from the menu? The official Olympic restaurants were told to "patiently suggest other options" if diners ordered "xiangrou," which is what they call Bowser over there. Say what? No dog meat? Next thing you know they'll put snails on the "Do Not Serve" list. I suppose calf brains, chocolate covered ants and those 100-year-old moldy eggs are out, too. Wouldn't you know it--everything I like. But on the hopeful side, all the factories have been closed. This means the lower grandstand fans can actually see the athletes. I think. I saw a photo on Drudge the other day and the bad air was still hanging around, looking for victims. But at least you can feel safe at the Games. I understand the Chinese army has moved three divisions into the city and will shoot on sight if you even think of carrying a Dali Lama sign. I'm really happy I gave my tickets away. I mean, the food and the air are lousy to start, but with dog now off the menu, just imagine what they'll throw in there to replace it.

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      July 22 2008:      Did you see the recent Associated Press story on viral advertising? The headline called it, "A new frontier in marketing." It's really kind of sick to learn that companies such as Anheuser-Busch spend their money on such raunchy and demeaning Web-TV "entertainment." Viral advertising started as word of mouth. Now you see it on such illustrious sites as YouTube. If you ever doubted that the current youth culture is headed for the bottom of the cesspool, one look at an Internet viral spot should convince you. One of them named "Swear Jar" features a series of words that would get any mainstream TV network closed in seconds. But the freedom of the Internet allows creative minds to break down all the barriers--and as the hearts of viewers harden, the spots become ever more scurrilous. As advertising, viral is impossible to track for effectiveness. Yet the AP story quotes a professor from St. Louis University as saying that viral ads "work" because consumers share them. Wise up, prof. When advertising "works," direct marketers know it for a fact because replies from ads go directly to them. Viral isn't advertising. It's nonsense.

      July 11 2008:      If you're a fan of text messaging, look for the strangest copy to show up on your phone when you get within 30 miles of your bank, your favorite clothing store, or your favorite auto parts store. The message will alert you to a sale, right now, today, this instant--provided you stop whatever you're doing and get down to the store right away. How'd they know I was so close to the bank before they sent the message, you might ask? According to DM News, where I saw the story, the list is available by geography. Therefore, a text blast can nail you if you're within 30 miles of the sponsor. And Infinite Media, of White Plains, NY, says that response rates from text messaging are "some of the best." Yes. my friend, with 25 million phone numbers and lifestyle data in their grasp, Infinite Media is about to give new meaning to the term "blast." I understand that 150,000 victims, I mean prospects, is the smallest buy you can make. The only way to escape is to turn off your phone. But who in today's society would ever do that? And besides, the sale might be terrific.

      July 1 2008:      Those of us who write direct mail do damn near anything to make sure our letters get opened. And usually we'll add "teaser" headlines that reveal the offer, a benefit, a promise or all three on the front side of the envelope. When the teaser hits the self-interest of the prospect or customer, the letters usually get opened. So when I picked up my mail the other day and saw a teaser that read, "Invoice Enclosed," I frowned. Then I noticed the piece came from "The Hearst Corporation Invoicing Bureau," and I frowned again. Maybe "scowled" would be a better word. Since I hadn't ordered anything from anyone, I opened the letter. Sure enough, an invoice--with a letter that read,, "Thank you for choosing to be part of our Continuous Service Program. As we recently notified you, your renewal to Popular Mechanics has been processed. Payment is now due. Please enclose your check with the invoice below." I've seen some misleading tricks to get a subscriber to renew, and this one is right in there. I didn't "choose" to be part of their "Continuous Service Program," a phony name if I ever heard one. They didn't "notify" me of anything. I never asked them to "process my renewal." Those are come-ons to make the subscriber feel guilty, and they'll probably work. But they're low class. And PM just lost me as a subscriber.

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      June 22 2008:      It's not your usual gaming conference. The people strolling around are all casino marketers--among the best in the business. You're invited to walk right up and ask them the marketing questions that have been rumbling around in your mind for weeks. You get such an opportunity only at Casino Marketing 2008, the National Conference, July 22-24 at Paris Las Vegas. The show opens on July 22, with a day-long session on Player Development. Then you're hit with some real heavyweights like Dr. Bill Eddington of the University of Nevada, the No. 1 authority on worldwide commercial gaming. Dave Zamarin, who pioneered gaming research. Steve Browne, Raving Consulting's top guy on motivating middle managers. Al Bernstein, the TV boxing analyst, tells you how to make sporting events pay off on the casino floor. Richard Schuetz, speaks in the Player Development session. The Lifetime Achievement Award goes to its first woman, Ginny Shanks, a pro for 25 years with Harrah's. And the laugh-out-loud side of the conference is Keynote Luncheon speaker Don McMillan. Then come the Romero Awards, named after your faithful reporter. And Dennis Conrad ends the show with his annual nail-biter, "The Best and Worst Casino Promotions of 2008." Sound good? Punch in www.casinomarketing2008.com right now for all the details. Or register by phoning Condor Registration at 256-852-4490.

      June 11 2008:      Remember when you'd walk to your mailbox and find a personal letter from a sweetheart, or from a family member? You simply couldn't wait to open it and read those delicious words that transported you back through time and brought you face-to-face with the writer. Glorious moments, many of them, just to see a loved-one's magic appear on the paper--line after line of serried handwriting. Sad moments, too, when you discovered a friend had gone west, as they used to say. They were more than letters. They were pieces of the writer's soul, dedicated only to you. They were heirlooms, keepsakes, treasures, works of art, masters of your memories. And if you were away from home or in a foreign land or at war in desolate and inhuman surroundings, they were doubly sweet. They announced love and life, misery and death, the birth of a child, stunning good fortune and crushing defeat. Remember them now, for their time has passed. They are obsolete, worn out, finished, losers to hasty writing and halfway thought. Email is the standard now and the experts say, "Keep it short." A recent study by Habeas shows 67 percent of consumers prefer Email for personal communication--and 65 percent prefer it for business. My Mac offers me the world--but it will never take the place of the personal letters I remember and revere.

      June 1 2008:      You have to admire Arnie Wexler. He never gives up. Day and night, seven days a week for all I know, the guy details the repugnant cost of compulsive gambling. And he should know. He's in the recovery stage now, and maybe for life. Meanwhile, Arnie know everyone in the casino business. Well, almost. And once you get on his mailing list you're on for life. The guy is a one-man company, doing everything he can to "out" compulsive gambling for the sickness it is. And casinos, of course, want him to succeed. In the year 2000, according to a recent story by John Canzano in the Oregonian, the security staff of the National Basketball Association asked for Arnie's help. He met with NBA officials for four hours, they told him they had a problem, and asked for his help. Arnie and his wife were running an intensive treatment program at the time. Sure, said Arnie., Three days later The NBA called him back. This time they wanted to set up meetings with coaches, officials and players from every team. It looked good, but nothing happened. Arnie thinks someone in the NBA hierarchy killed it. End of story? Maybe. But with the scandal of game official Tim Donaghy still fresh, you'd think the NBA might take a second look.

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      May 22 2008:      Unidentified flying objects, otherwise known as UFOs, have been seen in the skies above Texas since the beginning of the year. Hundreds have reported them, including a private pilot who has been flying for 30 years. Unfortunately, all of these persons are idiots, dopes, liars, or jokesters. They're unreliable, prone to fantasy, are easily confused by Venus and other bright planets and stars, and have read way too much science fiction. At least, that's the unspoken position taken by "science" and by practically all of the nation's press. I'll give the scientists a little break. Some of them have told me sotto voce that they believe UFOs are interplanetary spaceships but they're afraid their careers will end if they admit it. The press is another matter. They're the real idiots. The reporters sometimes start to interview witnesses by asking, "Do you drink?" TV anchors chuckle as they read the story, and wink a couple of times at the blondes on their right. In a courtroom, eye witness testimony can send a man to prison. In reports of UFOs, it counts for zip. I've studied and investigated UFO sightings for decades. I've seen them on three occasions. Nobody knows were they come from, but they're real. And they're here. Believe it.

      May 11 2008:      Maybe you saw the Associated Press story by Anick Jesdanun late last year, It revealed how computer viruses were started by a precocious ninth grader more than 25 years ago. Guy named Rich Skrenta wrote a self-replicating virus he named "Elk Cloner." He loosed something harmless (at the time) to trick his pals. Never mind why. Skrenta has cost all of us hundreds of dollars buying software that changes every year, the little twerp. But he's 40 now. Too late for a spanking. Besides, he became a computer genius and made millions, which is another reason to dislike the guy intensely. If it had stopped there, okay. But two brothers in Pakistan wrote "Brain," which didn't cause much damage and displayed a phone nu,mber to call for repairs. Nice of them. In 1988, "Morris" infected 6,000 computers, and in 1999 "Melissa" sent copies of itself to the first 50 names in your address book if you opened the attachment Then came "Love Bug," in 2000, :"Code Red" in 2001, "Blaster in 2003, and "Sasser" in 2004, each one more malicious than its predecessor. My advice? Get a Mac.

      May 1 2008:      Will a no-smoking law hurt the gambling business? That's what Colorado legislators asked last year--before they extended a statewide smoking ban to casinos. The answer is a 15 percent drop year-over-year in March, but it may not all be due to the new law. Of course, smokers and casino bosses filled the local prints with threats and doomsday predictions before legislators made their move, but there are no real arguments on the pro-smoking side. Even if it didn't affect the health of non-smokers, tobacco smoke is a damn nuisance. Okay, so much for objectivity. I hate the stuff. An executive of the Colorado Gaming Association said the group feels "pretty confident:" that most of the drop is the fault of the smoking ban--not the weather and not the economy. But a spokesman from Bronco Billy's in Cripple Creek says he feels it's really 60 percent no smoking, 20 percent weather and 20 percent economy. Meanwhile, the American Lung Association of Colorado says the air inside casinos has gone from "unhealthy" to "good." When I ws marketing director of the old Del Webb's Sahara in Las Vegas, I suggested the GM set aside a no-smoking section. He looked at me like I was the nut case. Times change, don't they.

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      April 22 2008:      Casinos are starting to look like old science fiction movies--the kind where robots and weird machines do everything and the humans walk around in out-of-style white coats and trousers trying to find out what their jobs are. Some joints never send cash vouchers. They just let the player know his money is in one of their cash machines--waiting for him to come in and draw it out. At other places you get your comps and drawing tickets from a kiosk. And ticket in-ticket out games are everywhere. The human side is gone. You can spend a hour on the slot floors of some places and never see a soul from the house. So when Dennis Conrad and Steve Browne of Raving Consulting Company in Reno, came up with a program named "Slot Ambassadors," I told them they should have named it "Rage Against the Machine." When I got a good look at it I stopped kidding. It's personal service all over again. "Slot Ambassadors" on the floor are like money in the bank. Raving has a 4-step program and a tactical manual so big you could hurt your back trying to lift it. I mean, these guys are thorough. They expect to get the program going in several casinos this summer--which means the human side is back. Get lost, Gort.

      April 11 2008:      The headline above the story by Sylvia Hubbard on Newsmax.com read, "Cell Phones More Dangerous Then Cigarettes." Do you know a single person who doesn't have a cell phone? of course you don't. How could humanity survive without cell phones? I mean, what would you do with your hands? How else could you take 30 calls a day--and make 45? And now they're worse than cigarettes? Got to be a mistake somewhere. Let me look at that story again. Hah! Here it is. The neurosurgeon who broke the news is an Australian. Those people live on the underside of the earth. The whole country stands on its head. What do they know about cell phones? And the doctor's name is Vini Khurana. Let me hear you say that real fast a couple of times. Okay. Going forward, as they say, we find that it's going to be another four years before we actually see how bad cell phones are. Dr. Khurana says by 2012, millions will have used cellphones for 10 years and he can check on the rise of brain tumors. But already he knows that tumors usually form on the "preferred ear." That leaves you with an out. Switch ears. You might get 10 more years of life that way. As for quitting cell phones--let me know if anyone you know actually does.

      April 1 2008:      USA Weekend is a feckless little preprint that slips in among the catalogues and real estate sections in a large number of Sunday newspapers. A headline on a recent edition caught my attention. "Stopping junk mail," it read. It wasn't exactly a revelation because newspapers routinely bust direct marketing over the head. They act like we purposely send mail just to make people mad. No direct marketer does that--but we do send to those whose profiles and buying histories indicate they may want our product. Newspapers never mention that they send mail, too. The New York Times is one of the worst offenders if you want to look at it that way--but I'd never call their mail junk. It's well-written, as is most prospecting mail. Yet it's always easy to find groups or individuals who hate almost everything that shows up in their mailboxes--so the tern "junk mail" has stuck. You never hear from the elderly, the shut-ins and the lonely because many of them like to get mail, no matter who sends it. Maybe you can tell that I'm trying to stay calm when only mail gets the "junk" treatment. I mean, I'm sick of junk newspapers, junk TV, junk Internet, junk billboards, junk telephone calls and junk radio? Have you ever felt that way?

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      March 22 2008:      My friend, The Amazing Kreskin, always writes predictions for the coming year. I've taken market positions based on this man--ever since the day in 1978 when he walked into my office at the Sahara Las Vegas, looked at my pregnant wife and said, "What are you going to name the boy?" Sure enough, three months later, a boy. A partial 2008 forecast from Amazing (which really is his first name): (1) the outcome of the presidential election will be decided within the last two weeks of the campaign (2) no major attacks on the US homeland between now and election day (3) the war on terror will last at least 30 more years (4) Michael Vick will play pro football again (5) the next crime trend will be home invasions. Not the cheeriest predictions I've ever heard him make, but there you are...This next story is one of the reason I love marketing people. Marc Kaplan. marketing director of the Taos Mountain Casino, Taos Pueblo, NM, reports that his casino has its own radio booth. They broadcast three live shows a week, too. Kaplan, also known as "Marketing Marc," writes the scripts for all of them. The shows take calls, and since KTAO streams 24/7 on the internet, maybe you can catch it. Hey, this Kaplan not only promotes the casino, he promotes the city, too. What a guy.

      March 11 2008:      I admired Denver University long before I moved to Colorado. I always thought of it as a no-nonsense school, where learning was paramount and everything else ranked well behind (for example, they dropped basketball when they had one of the best teams in the nation). So when my friend Gary Wright, boss of G.A. Wright Marketing, hooked up with DU's Daniels College of Business in a unique experiment, I knew it would be a winner. They call the project TIME--for Tribal Institute for Marketing Education. The brochure says it's a program that covers, "The full scope of casino marketing concepts from terminology and strategy to tactical execution, advertising and data analysis," The tribal students will get five intense three-day blocks of instruction for five months. DU professors from the business college and G.A. Wright experts teach the classes. Guest lecturers and casino industry pros fill in. (Full disclosure: I'm on the TIME board of directors.) Some of the lectures are held at nature settings in the Rocky Mountains. The classes are designed for native Americans, but are open to any student recommended by a casino or tribe. For information, 303-871-4565.

      March 1 2008:      I seldom write about politics, but political tactics interest me and Barack Obama's people have one that's a real beauty. After Super Tuesday, he was reported to have raised more then seven million bucks in a week--all from the Internet. Whoa, I said. Seven million from nickel and dime donors, and so fast? Must have a monster list, I thought. Then I read Brian Quinton's piece in the February issue of Direct magazine. When a December rally at Columbia, SC, drew 30,000, the crowd was asked to text their cell phone numbers to Obama headquarters and sign up for mobile messages. Then they were invited to look at tickets they were handed as they entered. Each had a name and phone number of four registered South Carolina Democrats. "Would they take 10 minutes right now to call these four people and urge them to vote for Obama in the South Carolina primary in January?"writes Quinton. Then, probably as astonished as I was when I read it, Quinton points out that Obama's campaign found a way to data-mine a live event and then got people to make up to 120,000 campaign calls--and charge the calls to their own bills. Because Obama makes a speech a day somewhere, you now have an idea how he's collected his list--and his money. If, like me, you thought mobile marketing was still a few years away, better take a closer look. Thank you, Direct magazine.

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      February 22 2008:      Daniel Rodriguez, a close friend of my brother Michael, left me a message on Saturday, Jan. 26. It was just a short message to call him, but his voice sounded scratchy and a little panicky. I phoned back. Michael, my younger brother, had died of a massive heart attack. He was 64. For the next couple of days I tried to keep busy calling the USC Medical Center morgue, a couple of mortuaries and Mike's doctor. I got nowhere. I screwed up everything. Then my wife stepped in. In two days she made all the arrangements while I moped around and thought how Michael's death should have stunned the jazz world. But I knew it wouldn't. Michael saw his first drum set at the age of fourteen. From the minute he sat down and started beating those things you knew he was going to be a good one. He started with lessons. Within a few months he was better than the teacher. When he turned 16, my parents took him to the top jazz clubs in Los Angeles, and he'd be invited to sit in. The other musicians would go crazy when Michael played. They'd congratulate ME for being his brother. When he hit 18, the LA jazz scene wise guys called him a genius. Then came engagements with Terry Gibbs and Lionel Hampton. Both these famous pros told me he was the best jazz drummer they'd ever heard. He played around the country with Gibbs and Hampton, made recordings, got ovations from the savvy jazz crowd when he was introduced. When the leader of the Sahara Las Vegas house band found out Mike was my brother, he told the band and I became a hero--a stand-in for Mike. My cousin Judy remembers watching Johnny Carson the evening Buddy Rich, the best big band drummer of his time, played on the show. When Carson began to praise him, Buddy looked down shyly, shook his head and said, "I don't know. There is a kid out there. His name is Mike Romero, and every time I hear him play it just makes me want to put my skins down." But by his late 20s, Mike had changed. He was simply too innocent, too young and too impressionable to escape the drug culture of the music business. His work slipped. He became paranoid. He played less and less. Finally he simply stopped. Then came a series of doctors and institutions. None helped. When our mother died in 1997, he seemed to straighten out. I bought him a complete new set of drums. When we walked into the shop the manager recognized Mike right away. "Greatest drummer in the world," he told me. Mike rallied for a while, even played with some LA jazz groups, but the intensity that once made him the best had deserted him. He never regained the driving beat that had him on the road to jazz immortality. I moved from Los Angeles to Colorado, and we talked on the phone and through letters for years. He became a kind and gentle man who was always ready to help a friend, but he never quite adjusted to the world around him. Last year Michael sold our family home and rented a room from Daniel. It might have been the happiest time of his life. No trouble, no worries, money in the bank, a good friend in Daniel. We talked on the phone and he sounded strong, confident. Maybe, I thought, he had snapped out of the haze that had held him prisoner for so long. Maybe he would even play again. Not to be. Too bad that drugs derailed his destiny before he could fulfill it. Too bad the whole damn jazz world never knew him. He really was the greatest. Goodbye, drummer boy. R.I.P.

      February 11 2008:      The Super Bowl ads astonished me. Some actually focused on the product or service. A few actually tried to sell something. I liked the lone ad for GoDaddy.com. They kept the company name in the lower left corner through the entire spot, With the barrage of "branding" nonsense that surrounded them it was a smart move. Grade for the entire batch of commercials was C minus. Now here are five spots whose agencies should be called in and asked what in the hell they were thinking. If you can remember even one sponsor, congratulations. (1) A fancy new car speeds through the French countryside. It halts when it reaches the French army, circa 1814, and Napoleon steps out. (2) A gorgeous girl and a bunch of lizards hoof it to the original choreography of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." One of the lizards looks like Jackson. (3) An inept car salesman is forced to jump into a ring of fire to confront an tattooed brute wearing a bad haircut. (4) In a series of animated B/W drawings, a guy tries to push a rock up a hill while an off-camera voice drones boring copy. (5) A guy with jumper cables attached to his nipples shucks and jives until he starts a car. Now this is truly silly stuff, done to make people laugh and say they loved the commercial. The agencies get an F. The answers (1) Garmin (2) Life Water (3) Cars.com (4) Yukon Hybrid (5) Amp Energy. Goodbye until 2009, students.

      February 1 2008:      Your faithful reporter is poised once again to challenge your powers of retention. I've pulled this stunt for the past eight years. Each time I've given you all my secret plans in advance and warned that you will lose--and you do. Let me recap: The Super Bowl on Feb. 3, will be loaded with TV commercials that cost the sponsors more than I make in a year (a little Romero dry wit, there). The big brands apparently tell their ad agencies to turn their writers and art directors loose. We want memorable and creative commercials, the sponsors cry. And the creatives, freed from the pressure of actually trying to sell anything, turn out the worst spots in the history of television. An eager press is delighted. They cover the commercials the next day as if they were messages from the Almighty--more important than the game itself. So your challenge is to watch the spots and remember the sponsors. Simple as that. I'll replay the spots in my Feb. 11 posting (in words, of course) and you tell me the sponsors. Be prepared to scratch your head, gaze at the ceiling and frown. Most of you won't remember even one. It's kind of sad when you realize the sponsors paid millions to air them and not a living soul remembers. But it's only money. And like I said--I win every year.

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      January 22 2008:      Don't let them take your landline phone away. It's going to be an antique soon. Worth a lot of money. People will want to buy it from you, then sit it on their desks so visitors will say, "How cute." Yes, my friends, landline phones will bring handsome prices in 2060, if you can find one. Cell phones already are pushing landline phones into the pits and furnaces reserved for the obsolescent. Maybe you saw the recent headline that read, "US now spends more on wireless than on landlines." It's true. My own home boasts weird little machines named "LinksUs" or some such. They lurk on the highest shelves, ready to transmit our deepest secrets to God knows where. My wife and I have cell phones that fly around the room whistling the Verizon theme song. They can take pictures, slice onions and pilot small aircraft if you know how to hook them up. Even our alarm system can do more than our poor, sad sack landline phones. Press just one button and police respond in seconds. Suddenly, the landline phone geniuses have discovered that they have a "mature" industry on their hands. Too bad. When they come to confiscate your phone, tell them your dog ate it.

      January 11 2008:      Brian Clark of the Rocky Mountain News is one sharp guy. He collects oddball sports stories and lays them on us at the end of the year. Here are some of the best from the Rocky's Dec. 22 edition: (1) Before his lethal injection in Arizona, a convicted killer's last words were "Go Raiders." (2) Indiana personal trainer Kevin Shelley shattered the world record for breaking wooden toilet seat lids with his head by smashing 46 in 60 seconds (3) A Florida high school girls relay team was disqualified from a meet because the members' sports bras didn't match (4) Denise Hanitzsch, 24, won the second "Stiletto Run" in Berlin, which featured 100 women running 100 meters in high heels (5) A soccer match organized as part of a campaign against hooliganism in Germany ended when five players attacked a heckler (6) Rick "Pellet Gun" Krause, 58, defended his crown at the International Cherry Spitting Championship in Michigan with a spit of 58 feet, 1 and 1/2 inches (7) Golfer Jay Williamson picked a person from the gallery to serve as his caddie after firing his regular caddie during the first round of the Canadian Open. Thank you, Brian Clark.

      January 1 2008:      Regular readers will think I'm completely nuts when they scan this one. They'll wonder what Unidentified Flying Objects have to do with casino marketing. I'll think of something. Anyway, I had to laugh at the December 9 edition of Parade magazine. They had a scientist write an article on UFOs. That's like asking a Republican to write a nonpartisan article on the Democrat presidential contenders--or vice versa. Scientists have a code when it comes to UFOs. They don't exist--period. Break that code and say goodbye to your career. So naturally, the scientist-writer praises the scientists at SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute) who have been listening for an alien signal from space for more than 15 years with zero success. Meanwhile, those uneducated clowns in the UFO community collect sightings by the thousands every year from almost every country in the world. Video tape, film, still shots, physical traces, eyewitnesses, radar, you name it. What a waste of time, right? I mean, a scientist can dismiss all that stuff with a wave of his hand. The writer of the Parade piece even says, "If a UFO landed in my back yard I'd want to have a look inside and meet the occupants before I'd be convinced." Reminds me of the casino wise guys who told me in 1976, "Tournaments? They'll never work."

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