Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Lone Star State of Confusion

Akron Beacon Journal columnist Bob Dyer is an embarassment to what's left of the paper. But even Dyer, blind pig that he is, couldn't miss this acorn. It seems that Issue 17 supporters are indeed calling people, using a firm whose callers are misprounouncing the name of the city -- AY-Kron.

And who is responsible for this screw-up?

    Mind you, we can't lay this one at the feet of the city administration. The campaign is being run by a privately funded group. That group is paying a Cleveland firm, Burgess & Burgess Strategists, to deal with this kind of thing.

    Burgess contracted with a telemarketing firm -- in Texas.

    Burgess' Katherine Manning admitted that the Texans at the Tyson Organization weren't fully tuned in to the local lingo.

    "We had a slight problem with that," she said.

    Manning said the decision to use out-of-state callers was based on cost. "It's a firm we've used several times, and they generally do give us a pretty good price."
To absolutely no one's surprise.

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