Just like giving out condoms makes kids have sex and giving out clean needles turns upright citizens into junkies, the government must protect us from public service ads more likely to destroy us than to save us. Concerned about all the horny bastards rubbing up against women on subways, New York City had an anti-groping ad campaign ready to be rolled out to the sicko public (that's you). But they had to scratch that. These ads would just set you perverts off even more!

The New York subway system is taking full advantage of its plan to sell all flat surfaces for advertising, including the outside of trains. The latest and most appropriate sponsor of the metal cattle car that you squeeze yourself into every depressing morning: Mad Men, the acclaimed show about advertising! Even if you barely miss your train as it pulls away, leaving you frustrated and abandoned, you'll still be educated about the existence of Mad Men. Sweet. More pics of the hellaciously busy interior of these message-wielding cars, after the jump.

A Better Business Bureau PR person writes in to note that pop-up ads don't just target the feeble-minded; apparently, some can steal credit card info that you entered on a totally unrelated site! Another reason the internet is not safe for anyone. [BBB, Previously]

The South Carolina state tourism agency has canceled an overseas ad campaign targeting the gays, which used the slogan "South Carolina is so gay." The state will save itself five thousand bucks by not paying for the previously approved posters, which, as we mentioned, read "South Carolina is so gay." This is a true story. [The State via Adfreak]

Do pop-up ads qualify as "deceptive marketing practices"? Good Morning America says "yes." A free enterprise advocacy group says "no." We say "yes, but don't you know not to click that shit by now?" We guess it's a public service that GMA did a spot last week warning people not to enter their credit card info into pop-ups. But if you're doing that, you are either elderly, or doomed to be snuffed out by the principles of Darwinian evolution in the digital age. Expect the marketing industry to strenuously object; pop-ups are simply an "information channel" in their view, the bastards. Watch the GMA clip, after the jump:

"Unregulated product placement is out of control these days," said Hamilton as he took a long, satisfying sip of his Folgers-brand coffee, savoring the full-bodied flavor. "Particularly on television, where product placement is an increasingly necessary source of revenue for all your favorite and least favorite shows." Now the FCC is trying to regulate it in a hilariously heavy-handed way, and evil marketing geniuses are fighting back by, inexplicably, flaunting their scary power over everything you see. "We almost consider ourselves to be the junior writers on the show," says one. The government willl destroy everything to stop you, fiend!:

US propaganda merchants, take note: Muslims are slaves to candy. They're attracted to its otherworldly colors; their foreign mouths water for its sinful sweetness. In this ad from Egypt, women are the sweet candy; the hijab face veil is the candy's wrapper; and men are the dirty flies. Uncover your face and be swarmed, ladies! (This is 100% accurate, it's just something Western women have learned to deal with). Click through for a larger pic and translation of this progressive message.

The only Chik-fil-A restaurant in the New York metropolitan area is located in the NYU food court. And today only, Chik-fil-A will give a free meal to "any customer who isn't 'too chicken' to visit any of the chain's nearly 1,400 participating restaurants fully dressed as a cow." NYU kids, we urge you to participate so that you can be exploited by the company and mocked by us (privately). The prize is a Chik-fil-A meal. [via Ad Age]

Most of the time people say an ad campaign is "good," they just mean that it's funny. Less often, it could be poignant, or provocative, or straight-out informative. But there's always the "incredibly morbid" tactic, too. It works! Making your audience shudder means they remember what you said. Or are permanently scarred by it. Same difference. After the jump, five ads that get their point across by evoking death, disfigurement, or sex crimes:

It's hard to convince people, sometimes, that blogging is a "real" job. But it totally is, in a statistically insignificant (but marginally growing!) number of cases. But, you know, the obsessive hobbyists don't help with that perception. And, uh, neither does this ad, from the University of Phoenix.

So what is Carl Weathers, the actor who played Rocky villain Apollo Creed, up to these days? Mostly just riding around on an odd bicycle with a basket full of flowers, scaring the townfolk with his long disquisitions on their appearance, and behaving generally like a man afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome. He encourages you to CHANGE, in the strongest possible terms! Because change is beautiful! This is all designed to promote some credit union, of course. We bring you three separate examples of Apollo's scary, unsolicited friendliness, after the jump. Someone help this man.

Esteemed angry ad blogger Copyranter says this new Ketel One ad just might be "The Most Annoying Ad Ever." That's tough, but its use of blatant trickery and time wasting as a marketing technique is certainly cruel. The target (drunk) audience might stare at this for hours with no satisfaction. Click through for a larger pic.

There's a huge exhibit at the New York Public Library right now called "The Real Men and Women of Madison Avenue," dedicated to the greatest examples of advertising ever. Funny that the public library is one of the few public spaces left that hasn't sold all its wall space to advertisers (we think-haven't been in a library since they invented the internet), but ads got in there through the back door anyhow! The educational back door. But we're going to save you the trip; after the jump, five classic ads from the exhibit that sum up everything the ad industry has ever taught us:

The advertising industry is too white! It's been an issue forever-see any episode of Mad Men for the historical perspective. Two years ago the NYC Commission on Human Rights decided to hold hearings about diversity in advertising, and all the big ad agency conglomerates enthusiastically signed on. Declaring a firm commitment to diversity is a modern hallmark of the ad industry, along with every other industry. Since diversity hasn't been achieved, of course, the hearings drag on to this day. But Ad Age reports that at last night's meeting, only six white people showed up, and "two were members of the commission, two were lawyers and one was a journalist." That's problematic, since white people are supposed to be the ones getting educated here. And they got called on it:

Billionaire Bruce Wasserstein is under attack from communists! And they're taking the fight to the blogs! SEIU, the service industry union, has been trying to unionize workers at a chain of nursing homes called Atria Senior Living. Atria was recently bought by Lazard Real Estate Partners, which is a little corner of Lazard Ltd., which is the parent company of Wasserstein's investment bank. Since the buyout, SEIU says the nursing homes have raised rents while cutting staff and level of care. You'll find SEUI's tricky pretend financial ads on the sites of the New York Post, the Times, and, yes, Gawker (see attached, or look up). But you probably won't see them over at the homepage of New York Magazine, which is owned by a guy named Bruce Wasserstein. [NYP]

Let's imagine that you are the friendly consumer, and the internet, where you do your shopping, is a series of stores. Then imagine that all the people who want to sell you ads are spies, following you from store to store and noting what you like to look at, so they can advertise that thing to you. Then think about what kind of internet "store" you've been going to. That's right, the porn store! This is the real reason people are mad about online ad targeting. Stop looking at us look at porn just so you can learn to sell us more porn!

Quick: Which one of these two boxes is an ad, and which is official Times Web content? Both ran in a column down the right side of an nytimes.com business news article, both have headlines in sans-serif font, both use the exact same link colors. It turns out the one with the big corporate logo (on the right) is actually the editorial content, while the one designed to look like a trustworthy Times table of contents is actually an ad, taking the reader to awful, faux-objective content like this. Congratulations, Times. I read a lot of fairly scuzzy media websites in the course of a day, and I've never been tricked quite this completely. Or as Ashton Kutcher likes to call it, "Link'd."

A couple months ago we heard that Atlanta rap mogul and midget Jermaine Dupri was starting a record label financed by Procter & Gamble and the sickly TAG body spray as a way to more effectively spread TAG body spray to the urban masses. For a moment it looked like right wing racism might have the unexpected benefit of scuttling the project, but alas. Now it's even worse: Every brand wants to make their own records. But hey, they just want the artist dudes to "have fun, as though they were doing any song" (about Converse, the shoe of grave-robbing image pimps):

Make a YouTube video-any video-and show your stupid Sprint phone in it, and Sprint will pay you $20. The promotion is appropriately called "Sell Out." Or, don't do this, and enjoy a satisfaction that $20 could never buy. Unless you bought crack. [via PostAdvertisingAge]

Are you fond of air travel, but loathe to be out of sight of advertising messages for a single moment of your trip? Sure, they put ads on the airplane tray tables and all through the airport and on the cabs and on the outside of the planes themselves. But are you expected to stand there at the luggage carousel for up to five minutes without seeing an ad pass in front of your face repeatedly? Not any more, damn it! A marketing company is now selling ads on the luggage carousel itself. So it goes by you again and again until you just can't stand it. A good media buy for the Suicide Hotline. [The god damn press release, via Adfreak]