Topeka ? State officials Tuesday created a buzz with a new advertising campaign, but not the kind they wanted.

“KANSAS. As big as you think” will be the slogan anchoring a drive to boost the image of Kansas and attract more tourists and businesses.

Problem is, the campaign was to be unveiled this coming Friday at big-production, simultaneous news conferences in seven cities across the state.

But the “brand” information was inadvertently released Tuesday by an official with the Topeka Convention and Visitors Bureau in an e-mail to media in advance of the news conferences.

Richard Forester, who sent the e-mail, was apologetic about the mishap.

“I screwed up,” he said.

Sally Lunsford, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Commerce, confirmed the information contained in the e-mail about the brand image was accurate.

But she said she hoped its premature release wouldn’t detract from the months of preparation put into the campaign effort.

“We would prefer things go as planned,” she said.

David Guth, associate dean of the Journalism School at Kansas University, said he didn’t believe the inadvertent release of the information would hurt the campaign.

“In the short-term it will take away the state’s ability to establish the initial frame or context of what they wanted to do.”

“In the long-term, there is no lasting effect. The proposal will live or die on its own merits,” said Guth, who has experience as both a news reporter and government spokesman.

Topeka Convention & Visitors Bureau Kansas Department of Commerce

Asked what he thought of “KANSAS. As big as you think,” Guth said he liked it.

“That definitely plays off of our hopes and dreams for the future,” he said.

State budget staff said the Commerce Department received $700,000 in economic development funds from lottery sales for the state brand image campaign. Lunsford said the final tab for the project could be more, but she declined to provide any further information about the project prior to Friday’s news conferences.

A task force and Callahan Creek, a Lawrence public relations and advertising company, have been working on changing Kansas’ image as a flat, tornado-prone state portrayed in drab black and white in “The Wizard of Oz.”

The image-makers decided to capitalize on something Kansas has a lot of — wide open spaces — though Kansas ranks near the bottom in states in public park space.

“Our wide open spaces do create big thinking,” Commerce Secretary Howard Fricke said in the prepared news release.

He said the spirit of Kansas shaped President Eisenhower, aviatrix Amelia Earhart and other innovative and famous Kansans.

“This rugged, freethinking attitude is still true today. It’s in our nature. People are more free to think and create here than they are in other places,” Fricke said in the prepared statement sent out early by mistake.

Print, radio and television ads featuring famous Kansans and wide-open vistas will air statewide starting Monday. The ads will be posted later on www.thinkkansas.com.

The idea for creating a new brand image arose from regional economic summits held in 2003.

A task force was developed that researched what people thought about Kansas and how more tourists could be drawn into the state.

“Our goal is to build a long-term brand image that the whole state will embrace,” Fricke said.

“The new state image provides a meaningful promise to people who live here, and to people who are considering doing business in the state, traveling to the state or moving to the state,” he said.