In last month’s column, I covered the first five of my most memorable casino moments. Here are the second five.
6. Tony the Midget Shoeshine Man – I was about to return to my room after a long day of work for a Las Vegas Strip client in 2000. Near the hotel elevator was a shoeshine stand with a crowd of people. The shoeshine attendant was about four feet tall (he said it was okay to call him either a “midget” or a “dwarf”). And that’s when I first met Tony the Shoeshine Man, the single best marketing entrepreneur I have ever witnessed. He applied the shoe polish with his hands (“rags don’t apply it as well as hands”). He offered to treat any shoes or briefcases I might have had in the hotel room. He asked if he could get me a drink at the nearby bar. He regaled me with stories from his days growing up in Italy. And the coup de grace at the end of the shine was setting the soles of my shoes on fire (to “open up the pores”).
7. The Caddy Blackjack Tournament – Early in my marketing career, the PGA Tour held a tournament in Las Vegas. The larger casino resorts fell all over themselves trying to use the tournament to bring in high-rolling golfer-gamblers to hobnob with the pros. Our casino didn’t have the kinds of high rollers for whom we could bear the expense of buying expensive pro-am spots in the tournament or throwing lavish high-end parties trying to attract the most famous PGA Tour pros. As I noodled on what our casino COULD do, I stumbled on a group totally under the marketing radar – PGA Tour caddies! And that’s how the Caddy Blackjack Tournament was born. The caddies wore their player bibs to the event; we put up a couple thousand bucks in prize money (along with free drinks and a free buffet) for the caddies and got CBS announcer Gary McCord to do a play-by-play right in the blackjack pit. It was a huge spectacle with a group (caddies) who had a great gambling profile, many of whom ended up staying at our casino-hotel for years to come. Memorable mayhem.
8. Singing behind the curtain in the bathtub – The most successful event I ever conducted in my career was the executive invitational, which paired our casino executives with our VIP customers in a team gambling tournament with a couple of short simple tournament sessions in slots and blackjack. The executives acted as tournament captains (and fellow players!), as well as party hosts. As we thought about what would make good entertainment for our opening-night welcome party, I thought, “Hey, let’s do a karaoke contest with separate Executive and Customer divisions!” And we did. The first year of the event only two people initially signed up to karaoke, but after the party drinks began to work their magic, you couldn’t keep the executives or the gambling customers off the karaoke stage. Subsequent years saw the introduction of the Top Dog trophy for the Executive Karaoke Champion, the beginning of executive/guest duets, and the introduction of a bathtub with a curtain to shield singers a little too shy to sing in public. It was memory-making entertainment for a memorable event.
9. Chicken Tic-Tac-Toe – I’ve seen, and even created, many crazy casino promotions in my career. The Seminole Casino Coconut Creek had an Oscars night party, not to watch the Oscars, but to give Oscars to their customers in a variety of categories. They also held a promotion and gave away Fonzie’s motorcycle, another built on a disintegrating satellite falling to Earth and maybe landing on the casino. Another casino put on display (at considerable expense) a grilled-cheese sandwich that had an image on it that some said was the Virgin Mary. But the most ubiquitous, memorable, casino promotion had to be the Chicken Tic-Tac-Toe game where customers lined up to try to win $10,000 by beating a live chicken at the game. That was an experience I’ll never forget, being beaten (more than once!) at Tic-Tac-Toe by a clucking chicken. And the company promoting it was called Feathers University!
10. The Siena “Seven Out Kill” – I save my favorite casino memory for last. And appropriately, it happened in my role as a casino player. It was at the (no longer open) Siena Hotel Casino in downtown Reno. In the middle of a hot and heavy crap game, the dice were going crazy in favor of the players. A little old lady was throwing the dice and admittedly was having trouble making the dice reach the end of the table (in the entire 40 minutes she was rolling!). The rule is the dice have to reach the end, but almost always, a “short roll” will still count. Well, on one particular roll, with $5,000-$6,000 of chips on the table, this delightful frail lady rolled the dice only about halfway down the table. All of us saw that the roll was a 7 out and all of the players would have lost all of those thousands of dollars. But in the blink of an eye, a casino boss saw that it was a short roll and all of the crap players who’d been on a high for 40 minutes would be severely deflated by a roll of the dice that didn’t quite seem fair (although she’d tossed several other “unfair” rolls). I couldn’t believe what the crap boss, Mike Boni, did (I still remember his name). Most bosses would have just been glad the roll was finally over and the casino had finally stopped bleeding money. But Mike Boni, in one memorable moment, made a quick $5,000 decision, with $1 million of customer goodwill. “No roll!” he yelled.
I have hundreds of other memorable stories from my time in the casino industry. In fact, it’s the rare business that produces numerous memories every day and in so many ways. And that, I believe, is the special power of casinos. After all the wins and losses are counted up, all anyone really has, and really remembers, are memories. Try to be sure you’re making them great ones.
