Hometown discount – how about some image management?

October 1, 2008

Today I got a flyer in the mail from the local animal control office. It looked like it had been created entirely from clipart and was rife with misused words and uncommon spelling errors.

I wrote an angry letter to my town government about the flyer and then crumpled it up and threw it in the recycling. Yes, I have a recycling bin that gets tossed in with all the rest of the regular garbage when the truck comes on trash day. But at least I have a bin.

After tossing this poor excuse for a flyer in the bin, I realized that people might want to weigh in on how their towns measure up in terms of image and pieces that are distributed to the residents of their little hamlet.

Here’s a photo or two – sorry for the crumples – of the flyer… See if you can find errors WHICH should have VIOLATERS strung up and punished according to the BY-LAWS of anyone’s town.

I realize we’re on the verge of a bailout bill and we’re running into budget issues everywhere. But should the pieces produced by your town be on par with flyers that people put up for yard sales? Don’t you think a town that has a school budget in the millions would have the resources to have some kid at the high school do something with this flyer to make it look like it wasn’t produced at the elementary school or as a summer-camp projects?

Just wondering what you think. Please leave your comments here. Maybe I’ve made points WHICH I’m wrong about. But I don’t think I’m a VIOLATER of any rules.

*Words in all caps are examples of words that were misused in the flyer. If you missed the irony, please reread this column from the beginning.

More to come…