Von der Esch attributed the early success to several factors, including bad weather in the East that had folks there hankering for activities in warm-weather states, effective and creative ads by Salt Lake-based Struck Communications, support from Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and a bill passed by the Legislature that cured a funding-mechanism glitch and cleared the way for the ads to begin at a good time.

"We wanted to not miss the buy that we'd been planning. We got a good position in the buy, so it's not 1:30 in the afternoon that you see our commercials. We could position that buy as the better buy for commercials that could be placed in the channels we were looking at, and it was the timing and the fact that we got the funding when we did that allowed us to go forward with that plan and get us into market when we thought it would be most advantageous to us, and that's why it's a comfort to see that it's paying off."

The TV, print and online ads will continue through August and are expected to yield 198.3 million advertising "impressions." If they are effective, they would improve on the state's overall tourist visitation figure. Before the state began large-scale advertising, 17 million people visited Utah annually, but that grew to 19.3 million in 2006.

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com