(Note: This story appears in the January 2023 issue of ED Magazine)
Sapphire Marketing Director George Wilson knows the power of marketability and its potent potential to attract and keep customers.
Sapphire Las Vegas marketing director George Wilson entered the adult nightclub industry in 2006 when he did marketing for Dennis DeGori at Scores Las
Vegas.
When DeGori partnered with the now departed Penthouse Las Vegas, Wilson added the club to his marketing responsibilities. In 2008, Scores sold to RCI which had its own marketing team in Texas, and Wilson was let go. His unemployment was short-lived, as he got a call from Sapphire’s managing partner Peter Feinstein about 15 minutes after his dismissal asking to meet. He started as Sapphire’s marketing director the following Monday.
In arguably the most competitive nightlife market in the US, where adult clubs must compete against all sorts of mainstream attractions, Wilson has excelled at marketing Sapphire and coming up with creative events to maintain the club’s position as a leading Las Vegas destination attraction.
ED Legal Correspondent Larry Kaplan spoke with Wilson about his marketing prowess and how he manages to keep Sapphire Las Vegas a premiere must-go-to spot on The Strip.
ED: Did you do marketing before you got into this industry?
WILSON: Yes, my background is in internet marketing, web development, and design. My first two jobs out of college were at Las Vegas dot-com companies. I started at Hello Network, and from there, I went to an aspiring competitor, Vegas.com. Its Vegashotspots.com was going to be a Vegas-centric site for things to do, but it quickly pivoted into nightlife attractions, seeing the demand for nightclubs and the like. So we built a system with Vegashotspots to promote passing the line in Las Vegas.
ED: How has that marketing experience helped you with marketing Sapphire?
WILSON: Internet marketing is a similar offering: studying buyers’ behaviors online and understanding that positioning your website for search engine optimization helps to get people coming to Vegas to make a commitment before they step off the plane.
ED: What are your primary target audiences?
WILSON: We do a lot of bachelor parties. Surprisingly, the number one selling package on our website is for couples. Right now is the biggest time of year. Couples will outsell all other pre-sale packages four to one.
ED: How difficult is utilizing social media to promote adult entertainment at a time when social media, especially Facebook and Instagram, aren’t adult-friendly?
WILSON: Meta makes it difficult for anybody that carries that moniker for business. As a gentlemen’s club, some of our posts automatically get flagged. However, you and I can both scroll on our personal Instagram’s and see much racier material than anything we’d ever post. We have staff handling social, content creation and distribution. Nothing we create would exceed a PG-13 rating, yet sometimes our accounts still get flagged. A few years ago, right before big game Sunday, our two Instagram accounts were taken down without warning or reason. I reached out to customer support. They said they didn’t know why our accounts were taken down but that we weren’t getting them back. So we started over.
Surprisingly, in terms of getting flagged, we’ve learned that showing more skin from a female’s backside is more detrimental than from the front.
“We found that many of the attractive ladies who’ve garnered large audiences in our exact demographic were doing just that: getting interactions with people online. So we make deals for influencers to host at the pool or club. And it works well for us.” — George Wilson
ED: That’s counterintuitive.
WILSON: It is, but I can tell you I deal with 30 to 40 local and nationwide influencers, and they all tell me they’ll flag you if you’re showing too much butt.
ED: Tell me about the influencers who work with you.
WILSON: It’s something that we came up with a while ago. It started with Lindsey Pelas at our pool. We found that many of the attractive ladies who’ve garnered large audiences in our exact demographic were doing just that: getting interactions with people online. So we make deals for influencers to host at the pool or club. And it works well for us. Guys that generally just see pictures and videos of their favorite influencers on Instagram and Twitter can now book packages to potentially take pictures or get signed autographs with them in a safe environment like Sapphire Club or pool.
ED: It would seem like that would help you to stand out.
WILSON: Nightclubs seem to be still utilizing huge DJs, so if you’ve got Tiesto or deadmau5 or others getting millions of dollars, that’s their marketing strategy. Some of the nightclubs are even going towards live performers. But our pool is definitely a different offering. We’re the only topless day club in town; our pool server staff and bartenders are topless. We have anywhere from 30 to 40 entertainers that come out and enjoy the sunlight as well.
ED: Tell me about your showroom. Does that help to distinguish you from other facilities?
WILSON: We’ve been essentially four-walling the showroom for corporate events. We’ve done that about 15 times this year alone. My goal is another 20-25 next year, building events around popular trade shows that come to town, then booking talent and marketing directly to conventioneers in town for those events.
ED: Do you work with entertainers and staff to utilize their personal social media to bring people to the club?
WILSON: We do quite a bit. Marcus (Bately, Sapphire Las Vegas GM) and I talk three or four times a week. The staff really gets behind any new concepts that we come up with. The main reason is, during our staff meetings, Peter shares this saying, ‘We’re in a rare industry; when the club does well, we all do well.’ And being in the hospitality industry, everybody in Vegas understands what that means. So we incentivize staff to go out and promote Sapphire and bring people into the club.
I’ve been here 14 years, it sounds cliché, but Sapphire really is a family atmosphere. Peter’s done a great job, from the director level to the servers and everyone else working together. And Marcus has excelled in building on that atmosphere from an operations standpoint. It speaks to the effort put into hiring the personalities and the people to build the teams that work inside. They all come together and help each other out.
The staff really gets behind any new concepts that we come up with. The main reason is, during our staff meetings, Peter (Feinstein) shares this saying, ‘We’re in a rare industry; when the club does well, we all do well.’ And being in the hospitality industry, everybody in Vegas understands what that means. So we incentivize staff to go out and promote Sapphire and bring people into the club. — George Wilson
ED: What do you do to ensure Sapphire stands out?
WILSON: I think it’s the effort we put into that first experience someone has with Sapphire. And that’s not necessarily through their first in-person visit to the club, but rather their first communication. Potential guests to the club can call, text, or chat online with real people, not robots. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a call queue where robots ask questions.
You’re not going to get that with Sapphire. That’s one of the big things we initiated years ago: providing, call, text, or chat online with real people here to help answer questions and book your Sapphire experience. I can tell you that if we do get them on the phone, our close rate is very high to book their experience at Sapphire.
Larry Kaplan has for 22 years been the Legal Correspondent for ED Publications. In addition, Mr. Kaplan is a business broker in the sale and purchase of adult nightclubs and adult retail stores and the Executive Director of the ACE of Michigan adult nightclub state trade association. Contact Larry Kaplan: at 313- 815-3311 or email larry@kaplanclubsales.com.
