Am I the only one who questions this?

Of course it’s easy to spend money and duplicate effort when you hire the wife of the Congressman:

Coalition polls region to find brand – Dayton Business Journal:
That’s the question the Dayton Development Coalition wants to address after deciding the region needs an identity of its own.

The coalition is in the midst of a campaign to brand and market the Dayton region. The $1 million project now is in the research and information-gathering phase. Marketing materials will be unveiled in September followed by a rollout to the communities within the region, said Maureen Patterson, project manager.

Coalition leaders are working to raise $200,000 to leverage a matching grant from the Ohio Business Development Coalition that will go toward the project, said Edward Burghard, executive director of the OBDC….

A lot of the work is being done by expert volunteers, but the coalition has hired a few groups: the University of Dayton is helping with research, Turner Effect is working on marketing, and Real Art Design Group is doing the creative marketing materials.

The coalition isn’t the only local entity working on a regional branding project. The city of Dayton in the next three weeks will choose a marketing company to brand the city, said City Spokesman Tom Biedenharn. The city’s request for proposals indicates it will work in conjunction with the coalition’s effort.

For the record: I own The Next Wave, an ad agency in Dayton. We decided not to bid on the Dayton proposal when we saw that the city wasn’t smart enough to know how to e-mail the rfp- and it had questionable past-performance requirements built in.