Past results dictate future performance for state's ads

The Nevada Commission on Tourism, Director Tim Maland says, thinks of itself as a direct-response business when it launches new advertising closely tracking the results from each ad placement.

The effects of all that data-gathering were demonstrated last week as the tourism agency said it placed a new round in its Nevada icons campaign in the magazines National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic Traveler, Sunset, Travel and Leisure and Outside in September and October.

The print ads feature members of Blue Man Group paddling on Lake Tahoe. A television ad that features red-caped Elvis impersonators mountain biking near Lake Tahoe begins airing next month on the Travel Channel, Discovery, Discovery Science and Fox News.

In each instance, Maland says, the buys reflect earlier responses from the campaign, which started running a year ago with images of Wayne Newton fishing at Pyramid Lake.

The campaign was developed by DRGM Advertising of Reno. The message, Maland says, is anything but subtle:

"We want people to know there is more to Nevada than entertainment, more to Nevada than Las Vegas," he says.

The ads have caught the eye of Las Vegas entertainers, and the tourism commission is hearing from a growing number who hope to be featured in the state's ads boosting their own careers in the process.

Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, who heads the Commission on Tourism, says it's coincidence but a welcomed coincidence that the ads featuring Lake Tahoe destinations appear shortly after the disastrous Angora fire.

"It's a perfect medicine for a very difficult time," he says. "We need to make sure we don't follow this natural disaster with an economic disaster."