Hooters Ads Target Women

Sure Hooters has become as synonymous for its girls in tightly clad orange shorts and belly revealing tee shirts, as it has for its signature chicken wings, but the resort itself is designed to appeal to anyone looking for a good value. With Las Vegas hotel and resort room prices skyrocketing, the property has teamed up with Advanced Results Marketing on a direct marketing television campaign that is getting girls and couples in the door by showing the full array of amenities available to guests at the ultra low price of just $25 per person per night.

Advanced Results Marketing has already made household names out of products such as Ginsu 2000 Knives, AbRoller and the Topsy Tail. It’s also helped increase awareness for Vegas.com, which gives users insider information and exclusive access to shows, events and nightclubs. The company has also helped Las Vegas casinos such as Monte Carlo and Excalibur fill rooms. Now it’s turning its efforts to building the Hooters brand in Sin City.

In addition to media planning and buying for Hooters Casino Hotel, ARM is producing a 60 second commercial for an exclusive Hooters promotion offering rooms for $25 per night, per person. The program began March 12 and spots are now airing on cable television in day and night rotations. Aimed at adults 35 - 54, with a heavy skew toward the women who often make the travel decisions, the spots emphasize the low promotional price in a city of expensive hotel rooms.

“We came to the Hooters executives with a creative and media campaign that is directly targeting a female skewing audience. Women actually play the slots, which has bigger revenue at casinos than table games,” said Kristi Tropp, VP of Advanced Results Marketing in an exclusive interview with onlinecasinocrawler.com.  “The advertisements target all the onsite amenities that appeal to a woman as well as men while also showing consumer value.’

Tropp said when the advertisements started, the ads immediately created more than 1,000 leads during the two week test run. Now a larger campaign is going to start running in May on networks geared toward women viewers. The spots will appear on the Lifetime Movie Network and AMC, a channel that runs many female focused films.

‘There is a whole audience out there we haven’t tapped into, and this campaign will do that,” said Tropp, noting that mixing the right type of ad with placements on the right station and day-part will yield powerful results.

Women seem to be responding mostly to the value proposition of getting rooms at such a low cost and getting access to similar amenities found at the larger casino resorts. She said the ads, while featuring the buxom female staff serving drinks and dealing cards, also shows a couple enjoying fine dining and a romantic getaway; woman enjoying spa services; a group of friends- male and female- enjoying food and drinks poolside as well as a group of girlfriends enjoying their shot at the slot machines.

According to Tropp, research shows women are often travel planning decision makers; and women love playing slot machines. Additionally, by focusing on the female friendly aspects of the resort the ads successfully dispel the notion of the resort as a mainly male zone.

“We are broadening the awareness of what is available and how Hooters is really for everyone. A woman can feel perfectly comfortable at the property. We’re tapping into something here. After all, everyone wants to go to Vegas,” said Tropp.

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