Coca-Cola and its various beverage logos may seem ubiquitous to most urban dwellers but Chicagoans are about to get an imagery overdose of Coke-owned products on an odd location: recycling can lids. 

In a timely bit of news for Earth Day the week, the Coca-Cola Foundation has agreed to grant $2.59 million to the city of Chicago to provide 50,000 blue recycling carts so that the city’s houses and smaller apartment buildings have access to recycling, the Chicago Tribune reports.

In return, Coke gets to plaster its logo and the logo of all of its many brands onto the can lids. This means that 25,000 carts/Coke ads will be sitting in front of people’s homes by year’s end. The rest will come over the next five years as carts get replaced.

“We see this as an incredible way to be able to give back to Chicago, give back to the United States, and to be able to keep our pledge, which is to be sure that every bottle, plastic bottle, can in which our products are packaged and sold will find its way back into a recycling bin,” said Sonya Soutus, a Coca-Cola marketing exec, the newspaper reports.Continue reading...

Burberry has opened its second largest store in North America, and while its new Chicago store may not be quite on the scale of its relaunched London flagship, it was feted with a unique local event that continued its theme of "retail as theater" and meshing digital, entertainment and fashion in one seamless experience. The store also boasts its first beauty consultation counter in North America.

The luxury brand's Chief Creative Officer, Christopher Bailey, hosted the Nov. 29 opening as a celebration of the Windy City, showcasing the city's iconic landmarks and creative community through the brand's digital platform, Art of the Trench. Music for the evening was provided by British musician Carl Barat from the Libertines, who performed a live set, followed by DJ Matt Roan. Guests at the event included actors Charlie Barnett, Billy Zane and Alex Holden, American former football player Jerry Azumah, DJ Kid Color, artist JC Steinbrunner.

According to Luxury Daily, "Burberry is partnering with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to bring $2.2 million in funding to the Chicago Hive Learning Network to celebrate this store opening. The funding will go toward inspiring young people in Chicago and creating innovative educational experiences."

When Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly faced off Saturday in a mock debate, the topic of whether the government should decide what size soda consumers should drink was brought up and summarily dismissed, but there are plenty of other folks — like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — who aren’t letting the issue go.

The just-passed law that Bloomberg pushed to help keep New Yorkers healthy by making it illegal to sell sodas larger than 16 oz. in many New York establishments will go into effect on March 12. And Bloomberg isn’t alone. A soda-tax measure was put on the ballot in Richmond, California, that would discourage consumers from drinking soda and collect money through a soda tax “for neighborhood gardens, recreation and other youth projects that would help fight childhood obesity,” BeyondChron.com reports.

Sick of being called a bad guy in the war against obesity, the American Beverage Association (and the soda giants it represents) today launched a "Calories Count" vending machine program that will start being distributed in the new year. The ABA's new initiative will help consumers identify lower-calorie sodas in vending machines by placing soda calorie counts right on the buttons of vending machines.Continue reading...

Walmart launched its Walmart Express mini-store concept in Chicago in July of 2011. As the Chicago Tribune noted at the time, "The world's largest retailer, best known for its football field-size supercenters, plans to roll out 15 Walmart Express stores this year in three U.S. test markets: Chicago, Richfield, N.C., and the discount chain's home state of Arkansas."

A year later, the closure of its small-format store — "typically 10,000 to 15,000 square feet (or) one-tenth the size of a standard Walmart supercenter" which carried "fresh groceries, pharmacy and health and beauty aids" — on the South Side of Chicago indicates that the retailing behemoth still is trying to figure out its urban strategy.Continue reading...

Things seem to be a lot more serious at Groupon headquarters in Chicago these days. There are more accountants and lawyers, and fun-loving CEO Andrew Mason is cracking fewer jokes, according to a profile in Bloomberg Businessweek magazine.

That's because at least two very serious things are going on at the originator of the online-enabled, locally based discount deal. First, Groupon is straining to cope with growth expectations now that later-coming rivals such as LivingSocial, Yelp and others have mimicked its local deals business model.

But second, Mason and company have become very deliberate about advancing his plan to elevate Groupon above its competition — and to ensure its long-term future and robust growth — by becoming a key digital partner to small businesses across the range of their application needs. That means not just helping them produce a quick glut of customers responding to a Groupon-advertised coupon but also becoming what Mason calls "the operating sytem for local commerce" with tools such as loyalty programs, scheduling software, and potentially a credit-card payment service.Continue reading...

Everybody is looking for cash these days, but how to drum it up when everybody is also paying extra close attention to where a wallet’s contents are disappearing to. Cities are no different. Government services are hurting for cash and there are only so many ways to generate more dough.

So cities are getting creative, the New York Times reports. Baltimore is currently trying to sell space on its fire engines to raise some extra pennies. And why not? The city’s current budget has made the elimination of three city fire companies necessary this summer.

Philadelphia is selling ad space on its subway fare cards and one of the city’s main train stops is now named for AT&T. Chicago is selling naming rights to its eleven "L" subway stations. As for the Times' hometown, the naming rights for the Atlantic Avenue subway station at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn were sold in 2009, and the MTA implemented the Barclays name change in May.Continue reading...

The idea of running a pay-what-you-can organization is generally laughed at as a business model, but Panera is proving skeptics wrong. So far, the St. Louis-based company has three such eateries and they are turning a profit, according to the Chicago Tribune.

This week Panera opened its fourth pay-what-you-can Panera Cares location, in Chicago. Founder and co-CEO Ron Shaich tells the Trib that the neighborhood that it's the perfect community for such a business because it has “million-dollar townhomes and people on the street."

"When you walk in, it's the full Panera experience," Shaich, who hopes to open a new Panera Cares cafe each quarter, told the Trib. "When you go into a soup kitchen, the energy is so negative and the food is institutional and the experience is institutional."Continue reading...

The marketing folks at McDonald’s seem to be a little obsessed with the fast-food chain’s fries these days. The company has a national television commercial with a grandpa fishing with his young grandson, who catches a few humans that are after his bait: a fry. Yes, kids, they're not fly-fishing but fry-fishing.

Now comes the news that the company’s new regional ad campaign around its corporate hometown of Chicago, “Best Fries on the Planet,” features a few billboards designed by Leo Burnett that honor the fried potatoes with giant streaming shafts of light.

The new billboards for McDonald’s, which is based in that city’s suburb of Oak Brook, are “giant boxes of fries with beacons of golden light illuminating the night sky,” according to NBC Chicago. Yes, kids, they're frylights, not skylights.Continue reading...