Maybe the 2007 Cadillac STS-V four-door sedan can be the Official Luxury Vehicle of Las Vegas. It is a $75,000 car, and that is the sum the Las Vegas City Council is paying the Active Network to explore opportunities for the city to join in corporate sponsorship agreements using our city’s internationally identifiable (or, “famous”) name.
Illustration by Benjamen Purvis
The Active Network—what could be known as the Nike Active Network for all the footwork it will do on behalf of our city—has done this type of work before. The company has signed similar deals with Santa Clara (California) and Nassau (New York) counties, and with the cities of Pittsburgh and Glendale, California. Soon after the Active Network launched in 1999, it worked a deal with Coca-Cola to provide promotional opportunities in the company’s headquarters in Huntington Beach, California. Under that arrangement, the beverage conglomerate began offering its product for all variety of promotions (supplying the company’s Dodgers tickets to nonprofits, setting up Dasani bottled water kiosks at distance races). A portion of the money raised went back to the city, and the company received a percentage, which under its deal with the City of Las Vegas would be 12 percent.
As Active Network Director of Business Development Don Schulte said, “We tell cities that we can raise revenue without raising taxes. Then they start to listen.”
Las Vegas has not been merely listening. City management analyst Esther Carter has been searching for this type of deal at least since the city’s Centennial celebration in 2005. The process is still in the conceptual stage (or, the Cirque du Soleil Conceptual Stage), but we can expect inventive concepts for Vegas. We suggest, for example:
• Red Bull as the Official Energy Drink of Las Vegas. Or Red Bull and Absolut as the Official Energy Drink That Will Get You Hammered in Las Vegas.
• Stanley Tools as the Official Hammer of Las Vegas, which can be paired with Paris Hilton as the Official Stanley Tools Hammered and Nailed Celebrity of Las Vegas.
We already have a mayor, Oscar Goodman (by “we” I mean only residents of the city of Las Vegas, which sometimes can be forgotten in this instance), who is already under contract with Bombay Sapphire. The office itself could be put up for sponsorship after Goodman departs.
• His successor would be Official Bombay Sapphire-Oscar Goodman Memorial Mayor (insert name here, and why not Findlay Toyota pitchman John Barr?). Active Network could ignite some competition among booze companies—Las Vegas Mayor John Barr, Made Possible By a Grant from Jagermeister.
• Money raised could help build a park homeless shelter, which would be the KB Home Las Vegas Home for the Homeless. We would not worry about the overuse of “home,” only that KB execs be photographed with soon-to-be-former homeless people at the official groundbreaking, which would be called the American Chrome Shovel Company/KB Home Las Vegas Home for the Homeless Groundbreaking Ceremony.
• If that idea is kicked to the curb, we should offer a broom company a chance to buy into our city’s homeless strategy. The Roxboro-Carolina Las Vegas Broom of Homeless People Eradication, maybe.
Oh, this is a real vein of gold.
• The John Fish Jewelry Vein of Gold.
• Any civic leader or politician who wishes to prophesy will have to buy time at the Ivory Las Vegas Soapbox.
• The Oakley Sunglasses Fremont Street Experience is a natural tie-in (squinting and sunspots being a couple of the lighted canopy’s primary experiences), and why not go after the region’s top tourist trap? The Victor Mousetrap Las Vegas Strip—what we’d start calling “The Vic”— is catchy in a cheesy sort of way. Of course, the Strip is not part of the city, but is a piece of Clark County.
• Or as we might one day call it, Clark Bar County.
“We want every step taken with consideration,” Schulte said. “But Las Vegas absolutely understands the value here. Las Vegas gets it.” Oh yeah. He has no idea how well we get it.