A real estate friend of mine recently told me that a lot of the graffiti that is in urban areas across the nation is going to be wiped out. He was not talking about the art work that adorns so many city streets, but rather the offensive scribbles that really devalue many buildings.

He didn’t tell me exactly how it was going to get done, but I wonder if we are going to follow what the Romanians did in Bucharest. It all started out as an advertising campaign for Cif, a cleaning products company, but turned into an appreciated national public service.

The McCann advertising group. ad agency, created an app that encouraged Romanians to snap photos of vulgar graffiti. The photos were transmitted to the Cif team who quickly drove in a branded van to the location to clean the surfaces.

There were so many times over the years that I wished I could have done the same thing. I hate when someone defaces properly that belongs to others. It would be great to catch them in the act, but that will never happen.