There are serious concerns with any state-funded marketing effort that so prominently features an elected official, Leggett said.
"I have not seen any market analysis that says tourism will be positively impacted because you have the voice and face of Bob Ehrlich in them," Leggett said. "What you are supposed to be selling is not the governor, but the state and its waterways, its environment, its parks, its tourist attractions. If you're selling the Chesapeake Bay, show a picture of the bay."
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. films a tourism commercial. Since the debut of the advertising campaign, requests for tourism brochures are up.
(State Of Maryland)
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Still, Ehrlich's team regards the governor as an ideal pitchman for the state.
Standing among a crew of 35 from a Baltimore-based production company in a quiet golf course community here, Schurick described the governor's budding acting career as a proven method for such marketing. He recalled that when he served in the administration of former governor William Donald Schaefer (D), television and radio ads were as de rigueur as Schaefer's trademark publicity stunts.
Blakely -- who produced campaign commercials for Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and John E. Sununu (N.H.) before working as a political adviser to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) -- said that although the intent of these TV spots is to increase tourism, "we're not denying that there's some political gain."
Castleman said he has seen signs that the ads are achieving their stated goal: There has been a 6.3 percent increase in requests for tourism brochures, he said.
The commercials represent only a small fraction of a marketing effort that Blakely envisions and is starting to roll out. He says he is borrowing from the communications strategy of the Reagan White House, which used imagery to attract TV coverage and market both the president and his ideas.
To some extent, Schurick said, politicians across the country have engaged in similar practices. When California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to unveil a recent plan to reform the corrections system, he did so from the guard tower of Mule Creek State Prison and then posted video of the event on the state's Web site. In North Carolina, so many political leaders were using public service announcements as a means to get their name and voice on the radio that the legislature contemplated banning them.
The difference in Maryland, Schurick said, is that this effort is being orchestrated on a grand scale, by a dedicated team of marketing experts.
That has led to carefully staged events starring the governor, such as the signing of legislation aimed at cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. For this, Ehrlich's team brought in the Pride of Baltimore clipper as a backdrop and had a film crew capture footage of the governor, with orchestral music and with American flags waving in the background.
Last week, for the release of a report highlighting problems on the Atlantic Coast, Blakely had Ehrlich take a boat tour.
Blakely also has arranged with Ehrlich's scheduler to coordinate his trips with opportunities to drop in on large businesses. He then calls ahead so the visits can be publicized in company newsletters. On Aug. 6, when Ehrlich needed to participate in a USO event for troops at Fort Meade at noon, Blakely arranged for him to visit Computer Sciences Corp. in nearby Annapolis Junction at 12:45 and the Dixie Printing and Packaging Plant in Glen Burnie at 2.
"The governor wants to change the perception that the state is not friendly to business," Blakely said. "One way for him to do that is to get out there, get him into the internal newsletters, talking about his vision."
At the same time, Schurick said, the state aims to present itself more like a corporation, with uniformity to everything from the fonts used on state letterhead to the appearance of agency Web sites. Over the next few months, visitors to state Web sites will notice that they have the same format -- with a bar along the top that includes photos of Ehrlich and Lt. Gov Michael S. Steele and a link to "the five pillars" of the governor's philosophy, Schurick said.
Communications professor Richard E. Vatz of Towson University calls this "smart politics." It makes sense, he said, "for a politician to use whatever persuasive tools maximize his ability to market his agenda positively."
The only question for taxpayers, political science professors say, is whether the effort primarily benefits the governor or the state.
Because there is no clear answer in this case, said James Gimpel, an associate professor of government at the University of Maryland, Ehrlich can only be viewed as "doing what all successful governors do, which is to capitalize on his position to get the message out."
