Posted on 05/05/2008 9:24:04 AM PDT by yankeedame
05/05/2008 06:34:10
CLEVELAND (AP) -- Papa John's Pizza has issued an apology to Cleveland its Cavaliers for making T-shirts with LeBron James' number and the word "crybaby" under it.
To apologize, Papa John's will sell Cleveland residents a large, one-topping pizza for 23 cents on Thursday. The 23 is an homage to James' jersey number. The company also will donate $10,000 to the Cavaliers Youth Fund.
The pizza chain's T-shirts were featured during the Cavs' games against the Wizards on Friday in Washington. Wizards fans taunted the Cavs, who won the payoff series that night in game six.
The shirts started after James complained about hard fouls, and Wizards' center Brendan Haywood called him a crybaby.
The company now says it is wishing the Cavs and James luck.
Seems like they printed the wrong name on the cry-baby tee shirts. Papa John needs to man up.
They should of put David Stern’s picture on the shirt.
David Stern is evil. He has singlehandedly destroyed the NBA. Notice how teams have to rely on outsourcing in order to be able to field a squad?
This is one of the more creative advertizing campaigns I’ve seen - it certainly drew attention to Papa John’s name. The big gamble now is whether people will like that 23 cent pizza so much that they would be willing to buy again at the regular price.
Reminds of the Dixie Chicks [paraphrasing]: "Most Americans are stupid. This is an awful country because half of the people voted for Bush. Oh! By the way, everybody -- we have a new album coming out! Hope you buy it!"
This sort of thing does not endear you to the public.
I’ll add this as a former Clevelander (Parma, actually) - The northeast Ohio area is full of very good, small individual (non-chain) pizza shops. Any competitor must have a good product or they will not gain much market share in that area.
This makes no sense.
why would a chain in Cleveland print that shirt in Cleveland?
But is he a crybaby? A lot of free advertising though.
It wasn’t in Cleveland. It was a franchisee in Washington that printed up the t-shirts for one of the games there.
There are roughly 40 franchises in the Cleveland area. I wouldn’t give a nickle for one at this point. As has been pointed out there are probably close to a thousand mom and pop places here that make better pizza than the big chains.
It’s a matter of opinion, would you complain if you were taking elbows to the jaw and fingers to the eyes a couple of times a game?
Personally, I don’t think that’s how the game should be played. Playing physical is one thing, playing dirty street ball is another. The Wizards are very good at the latter.
The games are predictable: dribble down the floor, everyone clears out of the middle, the team star does a 1-on-1, if that fails, he passes to one of his teammates who throws up a fade away 3 with 1 second on the shot clock. Repeat back and forth for 48 minutes.
And let’s not forget Parma Pierogies!!! I lived in Glenville and then out in Euclid where, as they say, everyone was either Italian or Slovene.
If Papa John’s is really smart their next ad campaign would feature a crying LeBron complaining that he did not get the PapaJohn pizza he expected.
Yeah, the ‘crybaby’ kicked they butt! Bye-bye wizzers. Maybe next year.
The Cleveland area Papa Johns need to print a t-shirt showing a Gandalf like wizard crying into a pizza with ‘who’s crying now’ printed on it.
I would cry if I had to eat one of their nasty pizzas even for 23 cents.
My advice is to try different locations of the same chain in your area before declaring that. The Papa John’s nearest to me seem about the same quality as the one you describe but where I play trivia in an adjoining town, their Papa John’s pizza is really good. I’m just saying don’t judge the entire chain by one or two locations. For example to get get good KFC chicken, I have to drive past two of their closer stores.
I’ve heard pizza only works out in northern climates. Franchises down south don’t do well because the pizza sucks down there. Anyone from the south partial to pizza?
After many years of pizza consumption I can say without reservation the quality often, if not always, depends on who is making it on a given day, even with larger chains.
Papa John’s here in NC is pretty decent. It’s not a great pizza but it’s a heck of a lot better for frozen. Anything less than $5 for a pie would be a steal.
Some of the best pizza I’ve ever tasted comes from a little pizzeria off Banker’s Alley in the heart of downtown Nashville. I forget the name of it, but I could easily find it by sight...and dang it’s good! :-Þ
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.