A Baltimore City Councilman wants to put advertisements on the city's fleet of fire trucks in order to ease their massive debt. Self-aggrandizing alternative ad agency People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals (PETA) wants to help by buying the first round of ads. Of course, since it's PETA, there's a mostly undressed girl involved.
It all started with City Councilman Pete Welch saying that they could make a decent amount of scratch if they sold advertisements on the sides of emergency vehicles, although probably not the full $48 million shortfall.
Welch said that "These are out-of-the-box times and you need out-of-the-box approaches in order to create additional revenue."
As soon as PETA recognized an opportunity to insert themselves into the news cycle they dashed off a press release offering to buy the first ads and make the sides of fire trucks look like the inside of fire houses:
In light of the recent bill you proposed that would allow advertisements to be placed on the city's fire engines to ease financial trouble, we would like to be the first to offer you a revenue-raising ad that will get hearts racing while preventing heart attacks. Our "Vegans Are Hot! Free Smokin'-Hot Recipes: PETA.org" advertisement, featuring a sexy woman showing off her vegan physique, will drive Baltimore residents to PETA's heart-healthy vegan recipes that will keep them firing on all cylinders.
This can be translated into "I don't know if we help animals anymore, but here are some more boobs and some free publicity for us for doing almost nothing since even Baltimore isn't even desperate enough to let us do this."