When the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority launched its cheeky “What Happens Here, Stays Here” campaign in January, 2003, it hoped the sassy slogan would help boost sagging post-September 11 tourism and recast Sin City as an adult playground where vacationers could throw off their taboos and inhibitions without consequence. Little did the group entrusted with managing the Vegas grade imagine the phrase would spread like a Western wildfire, ultimately taking a place in the popular lexicon alongside marketing taglines like “Just Do It” and “Got Milk?”

But the group’s research showed that while consumers were intrigued, they were additionally turned off by the practicalities of planning a trip to experience the city’s temptations [roughly 20 percent of Vegas visitors are first-timers]. “We had the push effect of television, the ads creating the desire in citizens to come,” says Sean Corbett, director of digital marketing at R&R Partners, the Las Vegas firm that created the campaign.

“We turned to the Web to help citizens plan, pull them in, and, essentially, rationalize potential visitors’ urge to come.”

Working with the design firm Critical Mass, R&R set about devising a set of Web-based tools to act as a digital enabler — and an extended brand-building tool for Las Vegas. The aftermath, My Vegas, was launched earlier that year. It’s a location-specific social networking Web site that lives within the broader VisitLasVegas.com. “Our key insight in designing the site,” says David Armano, Critical Mass vice-president for experience design, “is that humans come to Vegas from all by and that most folks are coordinating their trips with friends by e-mail.”

Tweak the Look and Feel

Such organizing can quickly become unwieldy and is frankly too Web 1.0 for words. So Critical Mass set out to design a site that would streamline would-be visitors’ planning process but maintain…

Orginal post by Top Tech News