Two Way Hard Three | Las Vegas Casino & Design Blog

Late last week, the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas unveiled its latest secret weapon--a purple truck. Since its existence was confirmed on Twitter, speculation about its true purpose has been running high. Would it dole out free indie rock and hipster glasses to the unwashed masses of Las Vegas? Would it spontaneously curate streetside happenings? Or would it actually do something useful, like provide free shuttle service? As usual with marketing promotions that want to go viral, it was shrouded in mystery.

Well, word has it they've been active this weekend, and I ran into the Cosmopolitan street team quite by accident this morning.

To learn what's going on with the purple truck, continue reading after the jump....

This morning, while minding my own business at the farmers' market on Eastern, I saw, among the booths offering farm fresh vegetables, jewelry, and the always-tasty tacizza, a blue couch. Since it didn't have a tent above it, I initially thought it had just been dumped there. But then I saw that it was being manned by a woman wearing a black dress with the Cosmopolitan C on it, so I figured I'd investigate.

Turns out that the whole purple truck/street team is a push for Unlock Mondays, a locals-directed promotion.

According to Katie, who is the brains behind the campaign, the truck will travel around Las Vegas, going where locals go, enabling "random acts of kindness." At the farmers' market, for example, they were giving out relaxing, cooling spa towels--pretty nice, considering it was well over 100.

Just for stopping by the couch, I got a nifty little old-fashioned key with a code that would let me unlock Monday offers,

...and a little LCD screen cleaning pad.

Since the Unlock Mondays requires you to sign up for email alerts before granting you access, I'm sharing only a few of the promotions listed on the handy brochure the street team distributes.

Nearly all of them are F&B related, most involving reduced-price alcoholic beverages:

- All casino bars: unlimited champagne starting at $50
- Blue Ribbon Sushi: complimentary upgrade from small hot sake to large hot sake
- China Poblano: Monday-exclusive tequila flight
- Comme Ca: Complimentary wine or champagne with lunch
- Estiatorio Milos: $20 prix fixe lunch, $49 prix fixe dinner
Holstein's: $1 beers and hots, 7-10PM
- The Henry: 1/2 off wine, 6-9PM

There are more, including a "complimentary poolside cinema" program on Monday nights that sounds pretty cool: movies under the stars, by the light of the Strip.

Curiously, there was only one gaming promotion: $5 Identity play for 500 points earned, which doesn't seem that alluring.

All in all, it's a nice enough way to reach out to locals. The people I talked to seemed quite surprised that I knew about the purple truck and initially thought I worked there (my lack of a name tag might have helped). Turns out I'd just missed the purple truck, which had dropped off the goodies and departed to spread more joy on a sweltering Vegas day.

Strategically, I'm not sure whether I think the truck and locals-heavy promotion is a good idea or not. Judging from the latest quarterly results, we know that the Cosmo is over-achieving in the F&B department already. I don't see the value in driving more locals to the property on one day of the week, particularly if you're not going to be aggressively going after the locals slot market.

On one hand, I get that it's meant to create goodwill ambassadors of locals. Theoretically, we'd queue up for the discount booze on Monday then, when our friends were in town the next weekend, offer to take them to the Cosmopolitan. That makes sense, but I'm not sure it's going to be enough in this locals market, where a newly de-BKed Station is aggressively announcing how much they love locals and is pitching offers aplenty to them.

Then there's the Rio, which has launched its own, more generous, locals-attracting campaign: 25% off at all Rio restaurants (besides the buffet and Whopper Bar), 50% off at all bars, 2-for-1 show tickets, and an unspecified cashback gaming benefit. Now that's got some teeth, and it guarantees that I'll be buying a few rounds when Creation Entertainment rolls out the red carpet to Star Trek fans in a few weeks.

So while I think the promotion is a nice way to boost visibility with locals, I'm not sure the offer itself has enough horsepower behind it to make much of a difference. I guess we'll see when the 3Q numbers come out.

If I haven't done justice to the entire Unlock Mondays campaign, I'd love for any of the Cosmopolitan social media mavens to share some more with us.