Vol. 4, No. 1, January 2008
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Self-made Man
John Romero found success by marketing himself
Few enjoyed the explosive growth of several industries more than Romero, who maintains a number of casino clients. Through the years, he learned to place trust in an important area: himself.
“As far back as I can remember, even with my parents, I never thought too much about working for a company,” Romero recalls. “My dad always worked for himself, never in his life had he worked for a company. He and my mother were in vaudeville, they played all over the world.”
So did their son, ultimately.
Romero arrived in Las Vegas as a sportswriter in the 1950s. He became sports editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and also worked in television. Romero was honored as Las Vegas’ best broadcaster and writer in consecutive years. It was an omen.
The professions paid poorly, but provided insight for any potential pitch-man. That’s what Romero became as the head of advertising, publicity and promotion for the Sahara in 1962. Besides modernizing the Sahara’s database and using it as a primary marketing tool, he followed a strong sixth sense. Romero once needed publicity for a then-unheralded Lainie Kazan. So he used an unconventional method.
“There was this problem promoting Lainie, who had become a Broadway star but no one I knew had ever heard of her,” Romero says. “Her publicity people sent some pictures, one of which was the sexiest picture of its time. Her hair was all done up, she had this wild look in her eyes, it was great, so we had it made into a full-page poster, listing when she was appearing. We put it in the Sun and the RJ the same day, meaning about 100,000 of the posters hit town.
“As soon as they do, the PTA calls the office and starts screaming about, ‘How dare you do this? I have a daughter and this is awful! We will picket the Sahara.’
“That’s exactly what I wanted. Every TV station around would show pickets in front of the Sahara. Then the PTA called up and withdrew the threat. So what do you do? There’s only one answer. I hired some pickets to march in front of our property. It made the evening news and Lainie Kazan sold out the showroom.”
“I always had a devilish streak in me,” he adds, with a grin.
The devil made the leap to independent contracting by 1980. He formed a company with three partners and began running the World Championship of Blackjack. The first tournament lured 1,400 players at $250 a pop and the Sahara found a gold mine. Romero brought subsequent tournaments in each requiring the casino to pay more of the advertising, hosting costs and prize money. All sides still prospered. Romero’s imprint extended to tournament regulations. In one afternoon, he wrote the rules that still govern 21 tournaments, including the rotating marker that dealers use to start each hand.
Tournaments fanned out to Aruba, Monte Carlo and Atlantic City. Casinos ultimately produced their own versions and Romero needed something new to stay ahead of gaming’s curve.
Players Club International was born. The outfit provided discounts on airfare, hotels, shows and food for the mushrooming gaming populace. It became a huge home run, not only for Romero, but for celebrity spokesman Telly Savalas. The star of cinema made the ultimate financial score with the new company.
“We’d go into every gaming center—Reno, Atlantic City, Vegas—any city with a concentration of gaming,” Romero says. “We had exclusive arrangements to provide a number of discounts for the customer. Everybody honored our Players Club.
“Telly was a helluva guy. We hired him and the question of compensation came up. We told him we were a public company without any money at the time, but he could have shares of stock at 78 cents if went along with us. We settled on 400,000 shares of Players Club stock. In a three- or four-year period, we shot up to $35 a share.
“I bumped into him one night a few years later. We talked about the company and the stock offering he’d accepted. He could not get the smile off his face.”
Romero had one of his own. He maintained plenty of stock and ultimately went on his own. Players was acquired by Harrah’s in 2000. By then, Romero had formed his own direct marketing company. It specialized in unusual casino direct mail and direct-response advertising copy.
Marketing remains a mystery, almost an elusive concept to many companies. Romero speaks at countless functions, and helps properties fine-tune their customer-cultivation methods, blending recipes from the past with latest innovations.
“There is a ton of money in marketing, but you may never know what you get into,” Romero says. “It’s smart to first compile a database, then market to the database. You take the people in your base and segment them into classes of casino players, the top all the way to the bottom. You have classifications in that pyramid, maybe 20 or 30 segments, all with different worths to the casino.
“That’s still the major thing done, but e-mail has come in. Mobile marketing has come on. You have text messages. Cell phones have changed the mix even more. There are all sorts of direct marketing methods that did not exist in the mid ‘80s.”
Romero also obtained the acclaim of his colleagues. He even has an award named after him. He authored two best-sellers, Casino Marketing and Secrets to Casino Marketing.
Life outside the box has indeed treated him well.
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