The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, never liked focus groups much — he said it was his job to figure out what the consumers wanted, not the other way around. For the New Mexico Department of Tourism, though, focus groups seem to be the guiding lights these days.

Consider Secretary Monique Jacobson's presentation at the Tourism Association of New Mexico conference earlier this week, discussing how our state needs to sell itself to prospective visitors. Her presentation was based on sessions with out-of-state focus groups. Through them, Jacobson said, she found surprising misperceptions about New Mexico.

Two Los Angeles focus group members wrote "snooze," when asked about New Mexico, while two Chicago focus group members think of us and beaches. We're the place tourists are driving through to get to Colorado. We are "boring," "the lost state" and "desert wasteland," while Colorado is "one of the most beautiful destinations you could go to in the United States." We just don't measure up.

Talk about hitting New Mexico where it hurts! But if you don't understand the problem, you can't fix it. Still, we admit to a bit of skepticism about these misperceptions — after all, those affluent travelers (the focus groups targeted folks making at least $75,000) surely read Travel + Leisure and Condé Nast Traveler. Santa Fe, still a part of New Mexico last time we looked, is a regular high-ranker on reader surveys in those prestigious magazines.

The most recent Travel + Leisure survey ranked Santa Fe No. 1 in four categories, including as a cultural getaway, and the city received high marks in such diverse areas as a romantic escape, museums, weather and intelligent people. And this was in a survey competing with New York, San Francisco, New Orleans and Chicago. Meanwhile, more than 28,000 Condé Nast Traveler readers picked The City Different as their No. 3 go-to city to visit. It seems to us that the smart folks at Tourism would try and figure out the disconnect between the focus groups and the wider readership of these magazines, who by the way, are just the kind of visitors we want to attract.

Nevertheless, it's always good to go after misperceptions and try and alter them. That way, we can show off the beauty, culture and, yes, adventure of New Mexico to the rest of the world. And Jacobson, even before figuring out the state's "brand," has the answer — we are competing with surrounding states that spend three times as much on advertising their attractions as we do. Increase the advertising budget, and we'll bet that prospective visitors will run, not walk, to the "destination that feeds their soul," just as soon as they finish their "adventure steeped in rich culture." Heck, that's probably what brought the aliens to Roswell.