Advertising Gone Wrong: A Billboard NOT to Die For.
Author: Jessie James | Filed under: Marketing, Multimedia, Social Media
Advertising is a tricky business; messages can be skewed and objectives can be misled. Hacienda restaurants experienced this first hand this month. The northern Indiana restaurant received a lot of negative feedback on the new billboards that were raised referring to the 1978 Jonestown cult massacre.
More than 900 people died after drinking cyanide infused grape Kool-aid as a part of a cult mass murder and suicide at the Jim Jones’ People’s Temple compound in Guyana. While trying to get the message across that Hacienda restaurants are a fun place to go where you can get a real team, almost “cult-like” feel, the advertisers went a little too far in referencing such a tragedy.
Patricia Barbera-Brown of South Bend, Indiana lives right by these billboards and was shocked to see such an allusion.
“I thought perhaps I had misread the sign,” she recalls. “It brought back quite a few horrible images and memories, and the very notion that a local restaurant would trivialize such a worldwide tragedy to simply increase their sales of cocktails is outrageous to me, and it offended me to the core.”
After an angry email to the restaurant, executives responded apologizing for offending her and informing her that the billboards were to be taken down.
Jeff Leslie, vice president of sales and marketing for the restaurant admitted their faults and said that the company ordered the billboards removal two weeks into the new advertising campaign.
This happens many a time in advertising: the message is lost and distorted into something that is not appealing to the audience. “Our role is not to be controversial or even edgy. We want to be noticed—and there’s a difference,” Leslie explained to the South Bend Tribune. “We have a responsibility to (advertise) with care, and that’s why we’re pulling this ad. We made a mistake and don’t want to have a negative image in the community.”
While the “We’re like a cult with better Kool-aid” campaign with a subtext, “to die for” did not go over well with the community, the marketing team’s intentions were positive.
Leslie said the team discussed how an entity can develop a cult following of like-minded people. However, he explained that the team took a wrong turn and hit a nerve, changing their core message.
What are your thoughts on this billboard faux pas? Let us know.
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