The Alaska Travel Industry Association is running a cable TV marketing campaign with four ads that are airing on the TLC reality show Sarah Palin’s Alaska, Discovery’s Deadliest Catch along with other shows on tv.

Alaska Beyond Your Dreams - Tourism Ad

Two of the ads have already been aired, and the third one, based on Alaska Tourism’s tagline of ‘Beyond Your Dreams, Within Your Reach” is about to air.

The ads show people photographing glaciers, wide angle shots of cruise ships, visitors watching grizzlies salmon fishing, and so on. The fourth ad is still under production. The ATIA apparently paid $600,000 for producing the ads.

Considering that former Gov. Sarah Palin was doing some of the same things in her show, it’s a good bet that the tv audience for her show will connect with the ads and generate a good response rate. Besides, the demographics for the show’s audience and Alaska’s standard visitor profile matches to a great degree.

According to the ATIA 2010 Travel Intentions study of inquiries that convert to actual visits, 67% of Alaska visitors are married, with an average age of 64 or thereabouts and an average income of around $70,000. According to Nielsen research, the median age of the TLC audience for Sarah Palin’s Alaska is 57.

Alaska Tourism is able to spend so much on the ads because Gov. Sean Parnell upped the TV ad budget from $1.2m to $6.1m for the current fiscal year. For FY2010, Alaska Tourism tv commercials were seen or heard 836 million times, and magazine ads were seen by 44.5 million subscribers. The state sent over 3.1 million direct mail packages with a message from Gov. Sean Parnell.

As a result, consumer visits to TravelAlaska.com increased by 15%, and Alaska travel stories were published in 377 publications with a combined circulation of 66 million. 20 million US consumers are now categorized as highly likely to visit Alaska in the next 5-7 years.

ATIA President Ron Peck tells Bloomberg that visitor numbers improved in 2010 and are expected to go up some more in 2011, so he hopes the state continues with the same level of enhanced funding in the future.

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Why Alaska Tourism Needs to Embrace Sarah Palin

The Sunday night premiere of Sarah Palin’s Alaska on TLC drew a record audience of 4.96 million viewers, the best ever for a TLC program launch. According to the Nielson ratings, 79% of this audience was above age 35 – a ripe audience for Alaska’s special brand of tourism.

Sarah Palin's Alaska

But cashing in on a hit show with a record audience isn’t the only reason why the Alaska Division of Tourism and the Alaska Travel Industry Association need to embrace Sarah Palin.  The simple fact is that it is indeed Sarah Palin’s Alaska, because like it or not, everyone associates Alaska more with Palin than with Denali, Mt. Mckinley or the Northern Lights.

If there’s any fallout – as in people who do not want to visit Alaska because they don’t like Palin, then there’s not much that Alaska can do to change their minds. On the other hand, there’s a heck of a lot they can do to tap those swept up by the Palin Effect.

Back in 2008, when it was announced that the then Governor Palin was going to be the Republican VP candidate, the Alaska Travel Industry Association had just sent out 500,000 promotional brochures with Palin’s picture on each brochure. That year, 4% more people showed interest in visiting Alaska.

Former Gov. Sarah Palin on TravelAlaska.com

The ATIA also had 2.6 million more brochures with Palin’s picture printed and waiting to be sent after the elections. The Palin Effect hit the brochures hard in 2009 and the response rate was 20% higher.

Ron Peck, president of ATIA, tells MSNBC that he understands that there are some people who will never watch the show, but also adds that “Anything that increases the interest in Alaska as a pristine and wild environment — which is really what we’re selling — is a plus.”

The positives and negatives of using Sarah Palin’s reality show to promote the state were probably best summed up by Palin herself - “Sure, there will be the usual critics who still won’t understand why we would document the natural resources and uniqueness of the Last Frontier, though in doing this I am keeping my promise to fellow Alaskans that I would do all I could to support and promote Alaska… Yes, they’ll criticize us no matter what, so I might as well climb and fly and trek and build and hunt and fish and share with you the awe-inspiring beauty of Alaska…and because I wanted my family along for the ride, I want your family to come along, too. Follow me there!”

Both the producers of the show (Mark Burnett Productions) and the ATIA plan to provide more information on the show’s website (TLC site & spalaska.com) and Alaska Tourism’s site (www.travelalaska.com) about how visitors can recreate the adventures of Sarah Palin shown on the show. This includes information and links for the locations and service providers.