What...
Following the 9/11 attacks, The Stratosphere Casino Hotel and Tower in Las Vegas secured a highly-trained K-9 Unit consisting of Officer Steve Lieberman and K-9 Officer Dex, a two year-old pure bred German Shepherd who is trained in obedience, building search, explosives detection, criminal apprehension, tracking, scouting, article search and area search.

Challenges...
The Stratosphere wanted to provide on-property an additional level of comfort and security for its patrons, the Las Vegas community and tourists as well as to show nationwide and internationally its concern for public safety and its diligence for public safety following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And, with Las Vegas being an extremely popular tourist destination, timing was key in on upgrading safety measures. Time was of the essence due to the fact that many other venues–hospitality-oriented as well as public infrastructure–would devise new plans and procedures and utilize new tools to accomplish the safeguarding of patrons on their property. The Stratosphere had to act fast to gain as much media attention for its safety plan-of-action as possible as well as to stem the decreasing tide of traffic to The Stratosphere and Las Vegas due to the terrorist attacks.

Campaign...
The main push was to ensure the safety of Stratosphere patrons, but to leverage the highly-trained K-9 unit for more publicity, and to help out the community, The Stratosphere offered the services of the K-9 unit, if needed, to McCarran International Airport, local law enforcement, Fire and Rescue forces and to Nellis Air Force. Preferred Public Relations held a press conference onsite at the Stratosphere to introduce Officer Dex and to share his involvement in the community.

In addition, The Stratosphere along with Preferred Public Relations implemented an educational outreach program within the Clark County School District and various local community and professional associations by conducting demonstrations on safety and the capability of the K-9 unit it if ever needed in the Las Vegas community. Trading cards were made with a picture of the K-9 unit shown on the front and statistics and facts about the unit on the back that were given out to school children during demonstrations at local schools.

We also held demonstrations for news crews, locally and nationally to show the capabilities of the K-9 unit. In fact, the local NBC affiliate sent their coverage of Officer Dex and Officer Lieberman via satellite to their sister stations which included pickup of the story in markets from Washington D.C., Cleveland and Springfield to Forth Worth, San Diego and Los Angeles. The Stratosphere incorporated the K-9 unit into its security department many months before other casinos and McCarran Airport had implemented their own K-9 units.

Results...
The end result was an enormous PR campaign which included the landing of footage in more than 25 national markets, MSNBC, Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, and repeat coverage on a wide variety of angles in the local market of Las Vegas, as well as numerous newspaper and magazine articles.

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