City for sale: name your price; Canon Dubuque, IBM Terre Haute. Why not?

In recent years, advertisers have developed a multitude of unconventional techniques for reaching hard-to-reach consumers. Sports stadiums routinely carry a corporate handle (First Wachovia Center, 3M Park, and let's not forget Wrigley Field); product placement in movies, television and even commercial fiction is now de rigeur; tennis players have quietly morphed into human billboards; and some companies have begun placing ads in video games to influence younger consumers who do not read newspapers and magazines with any great zeal or frequency. As a result, the more traditional advertising media (television, magazines, newspapers, buses and bill-boards) find themselves assailed on all sides.

One obvious advertising vehicle that has not yet been explored is tasteful municipal branding. Blighted metropolises such as Newark, N.J., Gary, Ind., and Detroit could certainly do with additional revenues. So the obvious question is. Why have they delayed so long in putting themselves up for corporate sponsorship? In other words, cities voluntarily seeking an intimate corporate identification with a particular brand or product, with both parties benefiting.

This could be achieved in a number of ways. The most obvious is direct corporate sponsorship, whereby a city would literally change its name to forge an intimate commercial identification with a corporate sponsor. Microsoft Seattle is one example, General Motors Detroit another. I don't see anything offensive about the less-than-euphonious names DaimlerChrysler Baton Rouge or San Reebok Francisco. But smaller cities that desperately need cash could also climb on board the gravy train. Canon Dubuque has a nice ring to it, as do IBM Terre Haute, Orville Redenbacher Duluth and Starbucks Sault Ste. Marie. The advantage to the advertiser is that every time the city's name appears--on a road map, a highway sign, even an airplane departure screen--the company's name would appear right alongside it. Regional transport would provide an equally attractive advertising medium: "This is the 5:20 Hudson Line local to Coca-Cola Poughkeepsie, with stops at Coca-Cola 125th Street, Coca-Cola Yonkers, Coca-Cola Tarrytown, Coca-Cola Ossining and Coca-Cola Croton-Harmon. Please make sure you are on the right train."

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Purists, aesthetes and spoilsports may object that such marketing techniques are intrusive and vulgar. This is not for them to decide. If cities and towns in need of cash for schools, fire engines and defibrillators feel that such advertising techniques are appropriate, then let the citizens of these localities decide whether to offer their communities as ad vehicles. Similarly, if the residents of a particular hamlet do not want to be identified with Coca-Cola, they can select another sponsor. "This is the 5:20 Hudson Line train to Coca-Cola Poughkeepsie, with stops at Pepsi 125th Street, Dr Pepper Yonkers, Perrier Tarrytown and San Pellegrino Croton-Harmon. Please make sure you are on the right train."

Third-world countries would benefit spectacularly from such an innovation. "Minolta Air Jamaica Flight 227 to Toyota Bogota, with connecting flights to Sao Spiderman II Paolo and Nobody Beats the Wiz Asuncion, is now boarding." And let's face it, Netscape Sahara Desert and The Sharper Image Mediterranean Ocean would bring in loads of cash to the impoverished nations that border these natural wonders.

A couple of years ago, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban offered a reporter $1 million if he would change his name to "Dallas Maverick." The possibilities here are staggering. If athletes, movie stars and politicians were willing to change their names from, say, Tom DeLay and Barry Bonds to "Microsoft Word for Windows DeLay" or "iPod Bonds," advertisers would have a fabulous showcase for their products. And celebrities would have more money, the only thing they care about.

Do I expect Kentucky to change its name to "KFC" or Rhode Island to become "The Dreyfus Fund" overnight? No. But neither should it be dismissed out of hand. Corporate sponsorship of "Your Red Lobster Yellowstone National Park" or the "GQ New Jersey Turnpike" no longer seems as outlandish as it once did. Were I naming my children today, I would not hesitate to give my daughter, Bridget, the flashy handle "Verizon" and my son, Gordon, the somewhat catchier moniker of "CVS." I would do it, and I would do it in a heartbeat.

Of course, if I had chosen to name my children "Enron" and "Imclone," I might have a bit of explaining to do. But so would Philadelphia Adelphi.