Discover the Unattributed -- More LAIC Plagiarism

Place branding is important. Too bad Dwaine Chapel at the Lake Area Improvement Corporation seems destined to brand this town as a hotbed of plagiarism. Below and on the left you can read the first two paragraphs of text presented as original work "by Dwaine Chapel" in the January 2008 Madison Chamber of Commerce Newsletter. On the right you can read the text of the original article by Kerry Doyle, which appears to be the actual source of the text.

The LAIC Perspective "by Dwaine Chapel" Madison Chamber of Commerce Newsletter, Jan 2008, p. 7	"Place branding for the economicdeveloper: AE weighs in on the ‘big debate.’" by Kerry Doyle, Marketing Strategist Angelou Economics, September 2007
Place branding within the economic development community. In a world where a community typically has 'one shot' to instantly get the attention of -- or introduce themselves to -- site selectors, consultants, tourists, potential workforce, and their own constituents, having and presenting a cohesive and enticing community identity has profound conscious and subconscious impact.	Place branding is a hot topic within the economic development community, and rightly so. In a world where marketers typically have ‘one shot’ to instantly get the attention of -- or introduce themselves to -- site selectors, consultants, tourists, potential workforce, and their own constituents, having and presenting a cohesive and enticing community identity has profound conscious and subconscious impact.
When the topic of place branding is debated in public and private forums, typically two factions become the primary contenders: The economic development practitioner faced with limited marketing resources but that first and foremost 'need to get their [city, region, state, country]'s name out there' vs. the marketing consultant that argues that a brand is not simply a logo and a tagline, but rather a collective of perceptions, messages, and mechanisms that a logo just happens to be a part of.	When the topic of place branding is debated in public and private forums, typically two factions become the primary contenders: The economic development practitioner faced with limited marketing resources but that first and foremost ‘need to get their [city, region, state, country]’s name out there’ vs. The marketing consultant that argues that a brand is not simply a logo and a tagline, but rather a collective of perceptions, messages, and mechanisms that a logo just happens to be a part of.

Other than the text in red, everything is identical, right down to the punctuation, including that bracketed and apostrophized phrase, "[city, region, state, country]'s" (please tell me entire nations are not falling prey to the marketing plague).

Chapel later cites Doyle as the source of a list of "four components of branding." Chapel gives no indication that Doyle authored the preceding material.

Chapel does incorporate some original material, changing Doyle's statement from this:

"AngelouEconomics’ (AE) perspective sits exactly in the middle" [Doyle, 2007]

to this:

"The LAIC perspective sits exactly in the middle" ["Chapel", 2008]

Ugh! Chapel even steals his text from the same website he plagiarized from back in July.

Evidently plagiarism isn't just a momentary oversight but a way of doing business in producing the LAIC's press commentary.

Want more evidence? See "Dwaine Chapel," "The LAIC Perspective," Chamber Newsletter, August 2007 [PDF], p. 4. Mostly plagiarized without attribution from The N2TEC Institute (National Network for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization), "N2TEC Mission," http://www.n2tec.org/mission.asp. Poorly plagiarized at that: Chapel merely cuts and pastes, failing to revise "we" to "N2TEC" or "they" in at least four instances, and not taking time to reformat a two-column bullet list into comprehensible prose.

It is ironic that this latest instance of plagiarism happens in conjunction with a discussion of "place branding," a rather offensive term in itself. (Mrs. Madville Times says, "Try place building instead!" and starts brewing up a blog post of her own.) This plagiarism is offensive not just because it happens on the public dollar -- Dwaine Chapel and the LAIC subsist on Madison's lodging and entertainment tax -- but also because it can exert some very negative place branding. Plagiarism looks bad. It says to anyone paying attention that we can't come up with our own ideas. Plagiarism says we are not only cravenly dependent on others but unable or unwilling to give others credit to those who do help us.

If we want people to come to Madison to Discover the Unexpected™ and not the Unattributed, then let's fix this problem. It's not hard -- I've taught ninth-graders to do it. If the LAIC wants to share knowledge from other sources, that's fine! We could all stand to read more about economic development. But instead of putting "by Dwaine Chapel," just give us the real citation -- author, title, date, and page. I do it here all the time... and I'm not getting paid with public tax dollars.

People lose jobs for plagiarizing. If the LAIC continues plagiarizing, Madison could lose something much worse: reputation, trust, and business.