Downtown Las Vegas close to choosing its own motto

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"What happens here, stays here," put Sin City on the marketing map.

Now, downtown Las Vegas is choosing its own motto.

The city of Las Vegas gave Symphony Park project manager Newland Co. the task of marketing the downtown area as a cohesive unit, including major civic projects like The Smith Center, downtown casinos, and Fremont East Entertainment District bars and restaurants.

"It was the right timing to really push the positive stories that are happening about downtown in a very coordinated manner," said Nancy Higgins, Newland’s marketing director.

Newland and public relations partner Faiss Foley Warren PR & Government Affairs are hosting an online contest, ending Friday, for Las Vegans to vote on a logo and tagline that will be used to market downtown within Southern Nevada. The winning logo and tagline will be unveiled Oct. 12 at the Symphony Park lecture series, "2012: The Year of Downtown."

Higgins said the tagline and logo won’t be used in a traditional advertising campaign, but will be incorporated in promotional materials, such as those used to market the "Capture Downtown" photo contest (co-sponsored by the Las Vegas Review-Journal), the Symphony Park lecture series and a Web portal for downtown businesses.

"This logo is really intended to be more of a complement to what everyone else is already doing with their marketing efforts downtown," Faiss Foley Warren managing partner Melissa Warren said. "It can stand on its own as far as a geographic identifier, but at the same time, it’s not an in-your-face logo that would overpower the El Cortez or the Plaza or the Golden Nugget."

Faiss Foley Warren’s design and copywriting team distilled information from downtown business owners, which was gleaned from a spring series of one-on-one stakeholder meetings, down to 100 taglines. From that pile, four were chosen.

The contest is limited to one vote per Internet protocol address. More than 700 people have voted so far.

Faiss Foley Warren and Newland Co. decided to wage an Internet campaign because of the initiative’s $25,000 budget, which comes from a larger $150,000 Symphony Park marketing fund provided by City Parkway V Inc., a nonprofit affiliate of the city.

The initiative’s social media aspect is also more inclusive, Warren said.

"We want downtown stakeholders to feel like they have some ownership in this," she said. "And they do."

Downtown resident and blogger Brian "Paco" Alvarez chose "Every city has a soul" as his favorite tagline.

"It reinforces downtown’s self-identity," he said.

Mark Brandenburg, minority owner of the Golden Gate downtown, also weighed in on the tagline. "Cross the neon divide" is his favorite, he said, because "it differentiates and shows we are a different area."

Brandenburg said marketing downtown as an entity is a good idea, because while downtown has its fans, plenty of Las Vegas residents still have no idea that the neighborhood has changed in recent years.

"A lot of people still don’t know we’re here. It’s hard to break through all the noise and recognition that the Strip has," Brandenburg said. "The idea of getting together in a collective way to let people know that downtown is here and there are a lot of dynamic things going on I think is a very good idea."

There has been no discussion about whether the Golden Gate will incorporate the new logo and tagline in its marketing materials, Brandenburg said, but Alvaraz plans to emblazon his blog, www.enculturatelasvegas.com, with the winning entry.

"This gives businesses, individuals, bloggers like myself something to brand ourselves with," he said. "This is our brand, this is our logo, this is who we are, and we are all in it together."

To vote on downtown’s new logo and tagline, visit www.lvdowntown.com.

Contact reporter Caitlin McGarry at cmcgarry@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5273.