Lovely little stories. Stories about love. Stories about missed opportunities at love. Personal stories. Open-ended stories. Five ways to make an ad campaign remarkable on which agency, Virtue, has triumphed for Las Vegas resort, Park MGM.
The ultimate triumph is the campaign execution. It’s nothing like advertising.
The campaign, If It’s Meant to Be, began with the ultimate cheats – a celebrity director (in this case Michel Gondry, with his brother Olivier), and intrigue. The launch film was a cryptic little “trailer” about love, that was beautifully shot and asked more questions than it answered. That was in mid-September.
Then came the campaign, a series of tiny films about missed connections – each containing a message from an admirer to the person they never met but want to.
It’s the wondrous dream of a holiday romance and the inextinguishable dream of happily ever after by chance rolled into one very likeable campaign. The campaign is based on the popular idea that Las Vegas is a place for both romance and chance and Virtue’s research, which found that 75% of Vegas visitors believe in fate, and 90% that true love is out there.
The campaign is running on TV, OTT, digital and in for the rest of the year.
“With Park MGM Las Vegas we tried to conceive of a place that fosters spontaneous human connections – even romance,” explained Andrew Zobler, founder and chief executive, Sydell Group.
“We zoomed in on the most intimate moments a human can experience and connected it to a city where everything is larger than life,” added Cameron Farrelly, chief creative officer, Virtue.
“As Park MGM attracts visitors seeking a different kind of Las Vegas, we wanted to embrace the subtleties that exist behind the bright lights of the city. With some of the most important literature of the modern age being born on the pages of missed connections, it was the perfect place to capture a truth otherwise overlooked.”
Credits:
Advertising Agency: Virtue
Chief Creative Officer: Cameron Farrelly
Group Creative Director: Heather Pieske
Creative Director: Alanna Watson
Art Directors: Sophia Moore & Paul Raffaele
Copywriter: Madeline Leary
Design: Jay Shen, Krissan Pattugalan
Head of Production: Jill Rothman
Head of Integrated Production: Daniela Asaro
Senior Producer: Leyla Rosario
Producers: KC Van Elslander & Daniel Bonomo
Account Management: Ray Kang, Carli Nicholas & Hagan Rushton
Strategy: RG Logan, Quay Fox, Justin Schneider & Taylor Delbridge
Production Company: Partizan
Directors: Michel Gondry + Olivier Gondry
Edited by: Olivier Gondry
Colour: Ricky Gausis @ MPC
Post-production: Eight VFX
Director of Music: Charlotte von Kotze
Music Licensing Assistant: Rowan Puri
Audio Mix: Tom Jucarone
Re-Recording Mixer: Sound Lounge
Client: Park MGM
Client Team: Andrew Zobler, Patrick Miller, Jeremy Selman, Jessica Glavin & Elizabeth Harlow
