A few months ago, the city of Philadelphia decided to leverage its trash cans for advertising revenue. Through an outside management company, Green City Solutions, it offered hundreds of public Bigbelly containers for paid messaging, with 5 percent of proceeds going to city waste-management projects.
Tom Wingert, vice president of marketing for City Fitness gyms, got a call in June about this new advertising opportunity.
“I was not interested in putting our logo on trash,” he said. “So I declined, and we moved on.”
Others jumped at the chance, most prominently the Northeast Philadelphia car dealership Barbera on the Boulevard. Hundreds of downtown trash cans were plastered with large, yellow type: “300 Jeeps Cheap!”