The Garden State has planted the seeds to review its tourism advertising and PR business with an RFP process through late April.

New Jersey’s Department of State released an RFP March 6 saying it will either award individual contracts for PR and advertising or a single pact covering both following the review process.

The work focuses on three tenets: reinforcing and enhancing the state’s vacation destination reputation, expanding its existing tourism markets, and bringing in digital marketing strategies. The PR scope includes traditional assignments like release writing, media relations with travel media and bloggers, events support and generally designing a PR plan that “parallels and complements” the state’s overall integrated marketing efforts.

Budget is $5M a year split as $300K for PR and $4.7M for ads.

Brushfire, with offices in Cedar Knolls, N.J., and New York City, is the incumbent from the last review in 2007, winning both pieces of the account.

Tourism is the state’s No. 3 industry as visitors generated a $35B impact in 2010. But that figure was below recent highs in the mid-2000s.

View the RFP at state. nj.us.