Unconventional. Eccentric. Quirky. Creative and marketing genius.
Those are a few of the adjectives to describe Rob Wells, the founder of San Diego-based Sixteenfifty – an integrated creative group that does branding, advertising, guest experience and interior design, and has been behind some of the most creative and edgy casino, restaurant and nightclub ad campaigns in Las Vegas. Wells most recently put his mark on Las Vegas by coming up with the name Circa, the newest hotel casino that opened in downtown in October.
The thought that Wells, now 52, would play a role in marketing of Las Vegas casinos, nightclubs and restaurants 20 years ago didn’t enter his mind. The Southern California resident thought of the city as a place to come, have fun and gamble on the weekend, and not for a company and career.
But after authoring the cookbook X-treme Cuisine, which was published by HarperCollins and received national media exposure on the Today Show on NBC and New York Times Book Review, Wells was offered a chance to help create and brand a restaurant at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino with celebrity chef Kerry Simon for the Simon Kitchen and Bar. That’s how he met restaurant development and operations expert Elizabeth Blau and worked with her over the years. Wells has done more than 150 restaurant concepts.
His work with Simon led to working with Peter Morton, the co-founder of the Hard Rock, in the advertising and marketing of the casino, which became a go-to spot in the early 2000s for younger crowds, despite it being off the Strip.
Sixteenfifty also worked with the Light Group that was part of the nightclub growth and expansion in the 2000s.
But Wells and his firm would make a mark in its work with Station Casinos, which, after opening Green Valley Ranch in 2001, wanted to make the Henderson casino resort a destination property for tourists.
It was a chance meeting and friendship with Staci Columbo (now Alonso), the chief marketing officer at the time that led to the opportunity.
In the proposal process, Wells found himself going up against R&R Partners and firms out of Los Angeles and didn’t expect to get the gig after the first meeting went poorly. He said he was new to the business, and he didn’t realize how the process worked at first. Wells perceived that CEO Frank Fertitta and Vice Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta never wanted to see him again.
When a second meeting was cancelled over scheduling while Wells was staying at the hotel, he left his concept and ideas for billboards for Station executives to review and execute for whatever agency they selected.
Wells was asked to fly into Las Vegas for another meeting with 15 Station executives. It was while in the air he came up with the idea he joked “was beamed down from outer space” for his opening sales pitch.
Wells stopped off at the store to pick up an onion, egg, knife and tin foil that he would use in his presentation. He passed an egg around the table and described its shape and how it was perfect for nature. When he got the egg back, he dropped it on the table and broke it open with yoke spilling everywhere.
“I said that’s advertising,” Wells said. “It looks shiny, but no one wants to touch an egg after it’s broken.”
Advertising is a fake promise, Wells told them, and you have to deliver to customers what they want in casino operations, hotel and food and beverage for it to be effective.
Wells then took the onion and did the same thing, passing it around the table, describing its round shape and saying that it was “nice and organic and couldn’t be squished.”
When he got it back, Wells took his knife and started slicing the onion open and described how it didn’t break because it’s built layer-upon-layer and that the center is the sweetest part.
He likes to forget that he accidently cut the boardroom table in the process.
“I said, ‘The onion is hospitality, and this is the guest experience,” Wells said. “If we can enhance the guest experience, we can make more money.’ Stations had always done that. It was always about that guest. Then I showed them the creative part and wondered if I got it. I did, and that moment started a 16 ½-year relationship. We did everything with Station Casinos and learned from some great operators and all the general managers, which got us to today. But that moment with the onion and egg, they still tell the story today.”
Sixteenfifty was behind the multi-million-dollar “We Love Locals” television ad, which Wells said became more than a campaign. Station team members would sing “All You Need is Love” as part of a television ad.
“I think it was one of greatest efforts at team building in Vegas history from a local’s initiative,” Wells said. “It was a movement more than a campaign that touched team members. We would come up with these ideas and [company CEO Frank Fertitta and Vice Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta] would say ‘Let’s do it.’ Then once they said that, they were so involved and full throttle. They’re always going for it.”
It was the Station campaign for opening Red Rock Resort, however, that brought a lot of pressure that Wells said needed to be done right or he would lose his contract.
The project was a Summerlin site where the 215 Beltway had yet to reach, Wells explained.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Wells said. “We were just going to do it.”
It was quite a challenge in creating a concept and campaign to get people to come to a resort 20 minutes off the Strip, Wells said. He and his team, which included his now-wife Amy, helped develop its brand and opening strategy, visual identity, guest experience, and food and beverage concepts, alignment of photo and video production and the daily design and marketing.
“I remember clearly when Amy laid those red rock stripes out on a page, and I said that’s it,” Wells remembered. “We did a billboard with the Red Rock stripes to get people to go there, and that happened. The Red Rock stripes became famous. We got to touch everything and worked with their team and learned a lot.”
It was because of their success with Station Casinos and Las Vegas roots that led to work with other casino companies across the country – including Turning Stone of the Oneida Indian Nation in New York. It has worked the last eight years doing marketing and promotional support and on casinos from the ground up supporting the vision of Ray Hallbritter, the CEO of Oneida Nation Enterprises. COO Pete Carmen has even given Rob the nickname Money. Recently, the Oneidas announced they are opening the Cove at Sylvan Beach in summer 2022.
Some of Wells other work has been with Rivers Casino in Illinois, Foxwoods in Connecticut, Graton Casino and Resort in Northern California, and Parq Vancouver in Canada, where he worked with Paragon Gaming’s Diana Bennett and the late Scott Menke.
Wells is grateful he’s gotten to work on a lot of projects from the ground up. In Las Vegas, his firm has worked with The Stratosphere, Wynn Resorts for food and beverage, and The Palms under former owners from the Maloof family.
“We were able to take the message into other markets that valuing the guests and treating your team incredible is going to work,” Wells said. “We were very lucky to be in gaming. We are good at our craft and owners trust us because we have been on big and small projects and wanted to create solutions.”
Among them was at the Palms, where Sixteenfifty developed another successful ad campaign with dancing slot machines and the saying “Palms Slots Pay Lots.”
“Our whole story is this accidental thing that happened by listening and learning from incredible operators and applying the creative and strategic execution of the experiences.”
Wells wasn’t done making his mark in Las Vegas. He joked with Derek Stevens, the owner of D Las Vegas and Golden Gate in downtown, that he would bet him $1 million that Stevens would use the name Wells came up with for his new downtown property. That ended up being the Circa Resort & Casino that opened in the middle of the pandemic.
As COVID-19 changed the industry for a period with the shutdown of casinos across the country starting in March 2020, Wells called his clients and told them he was furloughing himself. He took his company off retainers but continued to work with them while they determined their next steps and rethought the business.
Even though there’s been a lot of pain over the last 14 months, Wells said the gaming industry is rebounding and looks forward to the next chapter.
“There’s pent-up demand and players play,” Wells said. “It’s part of their daily life. I think it’s going to come back even stronger. It allowed companies to look deeply into operations and deeply into people and their motivation.”
Marketing and branding goes in cycles in how they look and feel and aesthetics, especially with social media as a huge part of messaging today. But ultimately, Wells said, advertising only matters on whether what’s promised is delivered.
“At the end of the day, you are marketing an experience to a guest, and the guest decides whether they like that or not,” Wells said. “If you are good at your craft, you create things that humans want, and if you are bad, you miss it. If you want to have bad service and bad food, you’re going to lose. It’s about service and quality. We are marketers. You use marketing to let people know something is there, but then you have to operate and the guest makes the decision. We try to do more than just the ad. It’s back to the onion and egg. The value we bring in doing a cool logo or interior, it has to align for the owner to take it, operate and hit a home run.”
