American dogs, like American people, are turning into a bunch of dumpy, couch-ridden fatties. But the pharmaceutical industry is rushing to the rescue! Slentrol, a diet drug for dogs, recently launched a new ad campaign [NYS] to convince guilty dog owners that what their mutt needs is chemicals, not a stick thrown a long way, over and over. Furthermore, some stern doggie personal trainers are warning about the dangers of "the wrong kind of exercise"—specifically, "uncontrolled play." Give those dogs a structured exercise program and diet drugs at once, foolish yuppies!

How not to compete with the Web: "With blinking lights, pop-up ads, kiss-on lipstick samples, scratch-off scents, melt-in-your-mouth taste strips and even pocket squares, advertisers are stuffing magazines full of just about anything to make their advertisements stand out. One reason for the phenomenon is the technology that makes it less expensive to put unusual objects in magazines and that helps advertisers create more sophisticated inserts." [Times]

This ad for Head & Shoulders dandruff shampoo [via Adrants] is purportedly a riff on "The Head & Shoulders point of view." But it's plain as day for anyone to see that it's actually an excuse for the pervert ad agency to get a look at the Mona Lisa's boobs. Is nothing sacred? Click through for a close-up shot. We're just glad Da Vinci's not around to see this.

Cat Fancy, the magazine that is the best punchline in any magazine joke, is apparently too broke to hire an ad agency. So they're searching for ad submissions with the theme "Cats Rule!" from you, the cat fanciers. The winning ad will appear right there in the pages of Cat Fancy. Why not make some ads that are funny and send them to us instead, if you truly believe, incorrectly, that "Cats Rule!" Ha, Cat Fancy. [Cat Fancy (ha) via Adfreak]

Mark "Copyranter" Duffy, New York's premier angry advertising blogger, has officially retired his blog. His succinct explanation to us: "Because people need to start paying for my stress." Well, can't argue with that. Somebody pay the man! [Copyranter]

Occasionally, scofflaws who don't respect the sanctity of advertising posters in the New York subway system tear off bits of some posters and stick them to others to create new and improved versions. Sometimes they're pointless; sometimes they're funny; and sometimes, as in this mixture of Darth Vader, Takashi Murakami, and a beer ad, they're pretty stunning works of art. Click through for larger pics [via And I Am Not Lying], then rush to the Lorimer L train stop to rip this down and sell it on Ebay:

You'd think at some point, in a creative review meeting, some advertising exec would stand up and say, "Maybe the 9-11 picture's not such a good idea." Such a simple sentence. But no! The latest example of incorporating a nationally traumatic terrorist mass murder into an ad: this spot for SABC Radio [via AdScam], with the tagline "There's More To See On Radio." Such as the Twin Towers burning. So hey, listen to the radio! Click through for a larger image, and pictures of the five worst 9-11 ads we've covered in the past:

Hello, athletic young women: are you "weary of being separated from boys and men in sports?" And eager to prove yourself "on a larger stage?" Well you're not going to make the WNBA, that's for sure. So why not do what 2,507 of your wisest female peers did last year and join the Marines [NYT]? In this period of difficult recruiting, the Few, the Proud are even putting in some extra effort to make their ads seem good to chicks like you!

From a long list of the most excruciating old school commercials that painfully integrated rapping comes this winner: The "Perfect Strangers" and "Head of the Class" hip hop promotional collaboration dance and musical extravaganza. I always thought Balki would make a promising rap star, and Larry, of course, is a great hype man. But spectacles like this surely prompted the sitcom stars of today to specifically write "No rapping promo appearances" language into their contracts. So many lost opportunities:

The eminently worthwhile Anti-Advertising Agency is offering the deal of a lifetime to one lucky robot who somehow found themselves stuck working in the soul-draining advertising industry: quit your job, and they'll cut you a check. For real! The pot stands at just $500 now, but they're accepting donations to raise it into the quadruple digits. A worthy cause! Whoever quits the marketing hellhole will also get "tips, training, and networking opportunities for future careers in the arts, journalism, volunteerism, social work, anthropology, mentalism, or poetry." They'll need that money for sure! We fully support this idea and encourage you all to donate to the freedom of a wage slave. The full press release, and how YOU can help set a soul afire, after the jump.

"I let you know/ That I'm not home/ But I'll be back/ Before too long!" That, of course, is but a small excerpt from "The Rap," just one of the SEVEN zany answering machine messages available for only $14.95 on the classic mail-order tape "Crazy Calls!" The "Boogie Woogie" answer? The "Call Me If You Can-Can" answer? All there! The vintage ad below [via Videogum] still has the 1-800 number to call and order the tape, so if somebody can get these people on the phone, get one of these tapes, and bring it to us, we will smile momentarily and then say "There are no tape players left."

If you're a corporate brand desperate to make your logo all-pervasive for all humanity walking the earth, but you find that skywriting is such a hassle, the solution for you has finally arrived: Flogos. It's a machine that makes "floating ads" out of soap bubbles in any shape you wish. The two-square-foot ads float hundreds of feet up in the air for up to an hour, and reportedly "fly for miles." It's about time somebody has efficiently colonized the very air surrounding us for the purpose of advertising! Can we get one in the shape of a cloud? [Live Science via Metafilter]. Click through for a bonus pic of a flying Flogos Christian cross.

The City of New York has always run anti-smoking ads that are pretty great, in the sense that they're disgusting and make smokers jump up and change channels as quickly as possible. The city's newest campaign features "Marie," a 58 year-old who has smoked for 40 years, even as bits of her body were constantly being amputated because of her poor circulation [NY Sun]. This could backfire, though, because it just makes it easy to say "I'll stop after my first amputation." The ad is below—I particularly admire how they slipped in a picture of a bone saw. Something to think about on my smoke break.

And so it continues: The New York Times Company's ad revenues for January through March were 9.2% lower than last year. That, and a write-off, threw the newspaper company into the red for the quarter.

Thomson Reuters is expected to plaster its logo all over New York, London and Toronto subway stations today, along with the New York Stock Exchange building and Times Square. Why? Because the company, formerly Thomson, is very excited that it just completed its takeover of Reuters and wants the whole world to care. Also, the company thinks promoting its brand will sell a few more subscriptions to its databases, like Westlaw. and help the company surpass in size its competitor Bloomberg. Let the ridiculously expensive pissing match begin! [Times]

Google is working with QVC on a REVOLUTIONARY advanced type of bar code that can be scanned with a mobile phone. Revolutionary in the sense of "Everything old is new again." These "QR codes" do face some obstacles, the most significant being the fact that less than 5% of people currently own phones compatible with the technology. A previous attempt at a similar product called CueCat was a big failure [Ad Age]. But Google, the company that's determined to scan all the world's books, is not giving up in its retro attachment to print-based technologies, even in the bar code sphere. Besides, these scannable QR codes have already proven their worth in trial campaigns by making the Case Western University campus "look like downtown Tokyo" and benefiting "the end user," say jargon-spouting engineers!

It's 1963 and this housewife had better find a better brand of coffee or her husband will taste a little of the secretary's, if you know what I mean (I mean he will sex them). As a reader said at Boing Boing, "It's like a teaser for season 2 of Mad Men!"

We don't know what's more indicative of a total lack of taste: the fact that Rock Star Games is passing out a big foam hand in the shape of "The Shocker" to promote their new Grand Theft Auto release, or that this would cause College Humor co-founder Ricky Van Veen to publicly assert his very own personal patent on the big foam Shocker hand. Or, the lowbrow Julia Allison-related joke that we could (but won't) make to tie these disparate cultural phenomena together. [Ricky Van Veen]

Shirley Phelps-Roper is the spokeswoman for Westboro Baptist Church, the truly execrable fringe group of psychos known for picketing the funerals of dead US soldiers because they believe their deaths are the result, somehow, of God's hate for gays. Josh Kilmer-Purcell is a gay New York author, ad executive, and veteran of the drag queen circuit under the name "AquaDisiac." But Kilmer-Purcell is busy being friends with the crazy lady [Ad Age]! "Like any good gay person, I'm trying to render her powerless by turning her into an anti-diva," he says. "She thinks I'm going to hell, and I think she's a bit overzealous, but beyond that, we have a surprising amount of things in common." It's the oddest couple since Devito and Schwarzenegger! Seriously, we have no idea. After the jump, a clip of Shirley Phelps-Roper being too insane for even Sean Hannity to bear: