Skift Take
There’s a fine line between what some might deem edgy and what some might find insensitive.
Out with the old. In with the new.
That's the main idea behind The Palms Casino Resort's latest marketing campaign, "From Dust to Gold," which debuted last week to herald the 17-year-old Las Vegas property's massive $620-million renovation in progress.
"Destroy the old. Create the new," a tagline from the campaign declares. And "destroy" they do.
Over the course of two minutes, the extended version of the campaign's spot features people wielding gilded baseball bats and crowbars, Molotov cocktails, and chainsaws, all while carnivorous Doberman Pinschers run down hallways and explosions erupt throughout the property.
But is the campaign's relentless focus on violence and destruction a bit too much?
It depends on whom you ask, but it's certainly something to consider, especially for a destination that just saw the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history take place only eight months ago.
"I have a mixed feeling about this ad campaign," Chekitan Dev, a professor of marketing at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration in the SC Johnson College of Business. "It appears to be about revitalizing the brand. On the one hand, glorifying violence and destroying property to make a point seems gratuitous at best and irresponsible and crass at worst."
Granted, there are no guns pictured in the campaign videos, but there are plenty of explosions. Close-up shots of a fear-stricken room service attendant speeding through the hotel's corridors with a massive golden chainsaw on his cart don't necessarily lighten the mood, either. The spot ends with a close-up of a Damien Hirst art piece that consists of a dismembered
