"What Happens Here, Stays Here": Selling the Untellable in a Tourism Advertising Campaign

"Any advertisement is ultimately a quick story, offering just enough imagery and text for the viewer or reader to insert themselves as potential buyers." (Bendix 2002:474-75)During a recent trip to the University of California Berkeley Folklore Archive, I came across some parodies of the Lucky Strike cigarettes advertising slogan "LS/MFT," an acronym for "Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco." Collected by students in Alan Dundes' folklore classes between 1964 and 1977, these parodies took several forms: "Lord, Save Me From Truman," "Loose Suspenders Means Falling Trousers," "Loose Straps Mean Floppy/Flabby/False Tits!," "Last Saturday, Mother Farted Twice," and "Let's Fuck, My Finger's Tired."' Dundes was one of the earliest folklorists to pay attention to the intersections between folklore and mass media. These parodies in the archive illustrate that he attended to such intersections in his teaching since at least 1964, and his own published work, specifically "Advertising and Folklore" (1963), demonstrates that he was looking at the dynamic relationship between folklore and mass media even before that.2 Since that publication in 1963, many have turned attention to the study of folklore and advertising (Falassi & Kligman 1976, Bums 1969, Degh 1994, Degh & Vazsonyi 1979, Denby 1971, Klaus 2010, Mieder & Mieder 1981 [1977], Newton 2010, Odber de Baubeta 1997, Sullenberger 1974). In this paper, I seek both to build upon and contribute to this body of scholarship by examining the interplay between folklore and mass-mediated advertising in a popular tourism ad campaign.In 2002, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), with the help of the advertising agency RR its tag line, for example, was announced a winner for the 2011 annual Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame in New York City, bringing in 54% of the public vote (Katsilometes 2011). Its longevity also points to its success, for as Linda Degh reminds us, "We can be certain that commercials that are kept running for a longer period of time on television correspond to the taste of the masses and satisfy public demand" (1994:42-43). Except for some short breaks, this ad campaign has been running from 2002 until the present.A closer look at the life of the tag line, "What Happens Here, Stays Here," shows how this advertising campaign has drawn upon folk culture and influenced it, providing opportunities for both continuity and innovation. As noted by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, and Fred R. Shapiro in The Dictionary of Modem Proverbs, parallel sayings about secrecy or discretion have been documented at least as early as the 1970s (2012:137). As examples, Doyle et al. point to laments about domestic abuse taking the form of the saying, "What's said (What happens) at home stays at home"; clinical or psychotherapeutic adages such as "What happens in the group (at the meeting, at the session) stays .. . "; and the baseball maxim "What happens in the clubhouse stays . . . ." They also point to earlier examples referencing specific vacation locales, including "Whatever happens in Mexico stays in Mexico" ( 1996) and "What happens in Daytona, stays in Daytona" (1998). …