Primed for a visibility boost: Office of Tourism touts $19 million campaign.

• Author: Beck, Cathie

Most everyone knows of Colorado's world-class vacation options--Aspen, Vail, Steamboat Springs, Mesa Verde National Park, skiing like nowhere else on the planet, rafting, camping, hiking and sightseeing.

Less known are attractions such as Colorado wine country tours, or family-oriented educational vacations offering archeology and history studies.

They could use a visibility boost, and they might get it, thanks to a record $19 million tourism budget earmarked to spread the word, worldwide, that Colorado is the place to park the RV.

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Almost as notable as the $19 million message is the messenger; the ad firm tabbed to spread the word isn't even headquartered in Colorado.

The Colorado Office of Tourism has cast its lot with MMG Worldwide, a Kansas City, Mo.-based advertising and marketing firm with annual billings of $100 million that works exclusively in the travel and hospitality industries. Since 1981, casinos, resorts, airlines and hotels have spent untold dollars with the firm to ensure that their particular piece of paradise gets front-and-center positioning when travelers research and then decide how and where to spend their travel dollars.

Some have raised an eyebrow that an out-of-state agency would win a contract to promote the state, and many might be tempted to cynically whisper the "Always Buy Colorado" produce-marketing slogan under their breaths.

Before MMG Worldwide won the contract in the fall of 2006, Praco Public Relations Advertising Agency, out of Colorado Springs, had a six-year run with the Colorado Tourism Office, which is a division of the Office of Economic Development and International Trade--now run by Gov. Bill Ritter appointee Don Elliman. Praco pitched and promoted the state within a roughly $5 million annual budget. But in the summer of 2006, that amount nearly quadrupled, thanks to House Bill 1201.

"Last year, Representative Tom Plant (D) and Senator Jim Isgar (D) and others helped establish a bill that allocated $19 million from gaming revenues," said Kim McNulty, director of the Colorado Tourism Office. "It was a bipartisan bill that the governor signed in June of 2006."

To understand that amount in context is to understand how Colorado had previously supported its tourism efforts, and, some might say, its very modest tourism promotion history.

"The Colorado Tourism Office was created in 2000 and then had about $5 million to promote tourism in Colorado," said McNulty, who has worked in the Tourism Office since 2001 and was appointed director by former Gov. Bill Owens in June 2004. "The funding, until the 2006 legislation, came from general fund revenues and was allocated every year. It was appropriated through the joint budget committee, approved by the Legislature, and then approved by the governor That 2000 legislation also created a board of directors for the office."

With the new $19 million resource locked in, the Office of Tourism collected requests for proposals, and by the fall of 2006, had whittled the selection to six finalists--one of them Praco.

"Praco...