• Ad Age, Thursday, February 9, 2006 11:46 AM

Anyone who's ever been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras knows that when the fun is over, a major league cleanup effort is required. So it seems perfectly fitting that the new official sponsor for the first post-Hurricane Katrina Mardi Gras will be none other than Glad trash bags. "Since this is the first major tourist event for people to come back to the region, we want to make sure the city can pull off the event as they want and that it's clean before, during and after," said David Friedler, marketing director for Glad trash bags and also a New Orleans native. "We think we'll be pretty visible.... I've been to plenty of Mardi Gras. There's a lot of trash." Glad, a joint venture between Clorox Co. and Procter & Gamble, will be featured in TV and print advertising for the event, and the company is talking to New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning to join the effort. (Manning is a native of New Orleans, where his father played quarterback for the Saints.) Glad already has donated 1.2 million ForceFlex trash bags to the Gulf Coast cleanup through the Clorox Foundation and donated another 100,000 as part of the sponsorship. The company also will sponsor a pre-Mardi-Gras "Katrina Krew" cleanup Feb. 23 to tidy up the French Quarter in advance of the celebration, as well as work with the New Orleans Sanitation Department during the event.

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