These efforts were rewarded by increased attendance. The number of park visitors increased by one-half million, or 12 percent, between fiscal 1986 and 1987, the period when results from the marketing strategy could be expected to appear. By the end of fiscal 1989, attendance had grown to nearly twice the four million people visiting the parks in 1984.

This improvement encouraged the DNR to take its marketing approach department-wide. Here's where the agency's private-sector partners proved their worth. Marketing specialists from 3-M, Toro, and Northwest Airlines, and from Twin Cities advertising agencies agreed to meet with DNR managers to help them draft marketing plans for each division. At first, agency managers were apprehensive. Not many had ever taken part in a public-private partnership even though many public administration articles praised such arrangements. But the DNR managers' anxieties were unwarranted. "The specialists assured us we were taking the right approach," said Tom Bauman, manager of the department's marketing project. "They helped us identify problems and donated time and effort to help us solve them on a pro bono basis." At one point in the search for marketing solutions, an outside consultant challenged a DNR committee to imagine that they were private owners of the state park system and to design it accordingly. They complied—and came up with a long list of ideas. When the committee reviewed the list to eliminate ideas unworkable under state ownership they had to delete only two.

These marketing efforts have brought the agency close enough to the customer to realize that there are some conflicting expectations among its users. Historically, the timber industry, which is regulated by the Forestry Division, has been one of the division's chief clients. But other clients, individual users moved by increased awareness of environmental considerations, have appealed to the DNR to protect the park system's expanses of wilderness. The conservationists among them ask for a greater variety of trees. Bird watchers want vegetation that will attract colorful species. The differences between the timber users and the individual users are heightened because a surge in the demand for a manufactured wood product called wafer board has prompted timbering giants such as Potlatch, Boise Cascade, and Lake Superior Paper to harvest Minnesota forests more intensively. Tensions between the industry and environmentalists have been running high, but Bauman and his associates hope to resolve differences over conflicting uses through mediation.