Boston-Based Ad Agency Nixes Images of Breathing-Impaired Dog Breeds After PETA Appeal

For Immediate Release:
January 3, 2024

Contact:
Nicole Perreira 202-483-7382

After hearing from PETA that bulldogs, pugs, and other breathing-impaired breeds (BIB) suffer from an array of physical disabilities due to their purposely flattened, pushed-in snouts, locally headquartered Hill Holliday—one of the largest ad agencies in the country—committed to not featuring these breeds in its ads. In thanks, PETA is sending the company a box of delicious paw-shaped vegan chocolates.

“By leaving these chronically suffering breeds out of its advertising, Hill Holliday is helping to reduce demand for dogs who are purposely bred to have life-threatening deformities,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is celebrating this forward-thinking company for taking a stand against promoting breathing-impaired breeds and urges other ad agencies, businesses, and institutions to join the growing list of companies that are acting to stop the suffering of these dogs.”

PETA points out that BIBs suffer from a multitude of health problems due to their deliberately distorted and restricted airways, which shorten their lives and cause them to pant, snort, wheeze, and struggle just to breathe—all in order to achieve a particular look. Breeding them also exacerbates the companion animal homelessness crisis, which sees around 70 million animals homeless in the U.S. at any given time. A number of countries—including Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway—have banned or restricted the breeding of some or all breathing-impaired breeds.

Hill Holliday joins a growing list of compassionate ad agencies and similar organizations—including Wieden+Kennedy, Wunderman Thompson, Ogilvy, Leo Burnett Chicago, the Ad Council, RPA, and SandersWingo—that have pledged not to use images of BIBs in any newly produced advertising or marketing materials. Hill Holliday previously agreed to leave great apes out of its campaigns after a PETA appeal.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.