This comment in the Star Tribune on Tuesday caught our attention: “Minnesota is the hardest state to recruit people to. It’s even harder to recruit people out of.”

Those words were spoken by Frank Jaskulke, member services director for the trade group LifeScience Alley. Its bio-business members include Mayo Clinic, Medtronic, St. Jude Medical and others in the scientific study of living organisms.

His comments came in a story about a study funded by Explore Minnesota. It found that people in other states think we in the North Star State are unsophisticated, old-fashioned and dull.

Minnesota is a good place to live and to visit. It’s just that it has a bad reputation across the country. The results show why it has been hard to get people to come visit our state. We are a beautiful place that is losing out on a lot of tourism dollars.

Tourism leaders want to change the mixed message our state has. Minnesota markets itself with the slogan “Explore Minnesota,” but license plates also say “Land of 10,000 Lakes” and businesses considering our state are hit with “Positively Minnesota.”

A better message might be one fix, but we hope they know Minnesota needs to market more than lakes. People in other states already know we have lakes and the great outdoors. What we ought to market is how friendly our people are, how we love to live here and why we stay.

In other words, instead of yet another state performing some high-minded, top-down costly tourism campaign, do one that is vastly different. Do one that mimics a grass-roots push, a seemingly people-up approach with sound bites of testimonials mixed with scenes of frivolity, shopping and dining finds, good education, low-crime living and, of course, summer and winter recreation.

If what we have over other states is, as Jaskulke pointed out, people who like it here, then make us Minnesotans and what we like the central themes of the campaign. Let the residents tell the country why people should come here to live, work, visit and play.