By green-lighting a five-word slogan, Manny Cortez launched a marketing campaign credited with bringing record numbers of tourists to Las Vegas. He also inadvertently sent the phrase “What happens here stays here” sailing into the pop-culture lexicon.
Since debuting in 2002, the phrase has been called one of the most effective tourism slogans of all time.
Mr. Cortez, 67, the longtime president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, died Sunday after a heart attack at his Las Vegas home, said Billy Vassilliadis, whose R&R Partners advertising agency devised the campaign during a tourism slump brought on by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“It was the first time we were going back into the marketplace after 9/11, and Manny was more involved than normal because he was concerned that we get everything right,” Vassilliadis said.
When Las Vegas’ efforts to market itself as a family-friendly destination in the 1990s failed to pay off, the new slogan was seen as an effective way to let the world know the old Sin City was back.
From his first job in Las Vegas as a parking attendant at the Stardust Hotel and Casino, Mr. Cortez rose to become the city’s chief of tourism in 1991.
