L.A. taps star power to rejuvenate ailing tour business.

For Diane Keaton, it's the architecture. Ray Charles says he digs the music scene. Tom Arnold likes winding drives at sunset.

They are among more than 30 celebrities who have donated their names and faces to espouse the virtues of Los Angeles as part of a marketing campaign that starts this week called "See My LA."

"The more people are talking about L.A. and the more celebrities and people of note spread the message, the more it will bring people here," Keaton said. "I'm sick of hearing we don't have any history in Los Angeles, because we do. I want to be part of a group that tries to showcase all these treasures we have."

This month, LA Inc., the Convention and Visitors Bureau, is placing ads in several newspapers and magazines, including the San Francisco Chronicle and Automobile Club publications that reach 6.5 million households in Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Northern California. Sixty-eight billboards and posters from the campaign were scheduled to appear throughout Los Angeles International Airport beginning this week. A national rollout could begin by the end of the year.

"This leverages one of the most distinguishing characteristics of Los Angeles: its celebrities," said Michael Collins, LA Inc.'s executive vice president. "Having those celebrities talk about the other characteristics of L.A., its amazing amount of diversity, sends a very strong message."

The celebrities donate their services. The Cimarron Group charged $50,000, but much of the agency's work was on the campaign was performed pro bono. Universal Studios, Sees Candies Inc. and local hotels, among other firms, underwrote the cost of the $870,000 insert in the AAA magazines and the placement in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Enticing people

Los Angeles lags only New York in the number of annual visitors, but it has been buffeted like other cities from a post-9/11 drop-off in tourists, along with the subsequent SARS epidemic and outbreak of war in Iraq. There have been signs of a turnaround in recent weeks, with airport traffic and hotel occupancy on the rise.

"Whatever we can do in the entertainment world to entice people to come here as tourists is a wonderful thing," said Doris Roberts, who plays Ray Romano's mother on the CBS comedy "Everybody Loves Raymond." "We need to be proud of who we are and where we live and the great life that we have."

Corporate citizens have joined the campaign as well. El Segundo-based Mattel Inc. has allowed the bureau to use an image of Barbie without a fee, and Viacom Inc.'s Nickelodeon unit allowed the use of its "Fairly Odd Parents" characters.

"If this was for a brand, it would be unaffordable," said Gerry Rubin, president and chief executive of Santa Monica-based advertising agency Rubin Postaer and Associates. "To take 33 icons of this nature and this stature and market it as a consumer brand, it would be nigh to impossible."

The origins of "See My LA" go back to Mayor James Hahn's 2002 trip to Asia when LA Inc. prepared posters to promote several of the celebrities in the entourage, including now-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, actress Jamie Lee Curtis and Dodger pitcher Kazuhisa Ishii. The posters turned out to be a hit at travel stores and travel agencies, and LA Inc. officials, seeing the success, began recruiting other celebrities.

It's a strategy Schwarzenegger has extended in promoting all of California. Last week, the governor and his wife, Maria Shriver, filmed an ad for the California Travel and Tourism Commission and he was to address this week's Pow Wow convention, a downtown meeting of tour operators from around the world.

"The governor understands and appreciates the huge impact tourism has on California's economy," said spokesman Vince Sollitto. "He considers it one of the pillars of the state's economy."

Schwarzenegger is also adding star power to the California Film Commission. In mid-April, he named Danny DeVito and Clint Eastwood as members of the panel, which helps production companies secure permits for filming on state property.

In ads prepared for the California Travel and Tourism Commission, Jack Nicholson and Wolfgang Puck volunteered their time for the commission's tourism promotions. "Images are very powerful, they can really motivate travel," said Caroline Beteta, executive director of the California Travel and Tourism Commission. "Celebrities are perceived to be a quintessential part of the California lifestyle and it's important the persona matches the brand."

"Since 9/11 we're not taking things for granted anymore," Roberts said. "When we like something and we're proud of something we like to talk about it. That's my reason, I think."