Don't Drink the Kool-Aid
Re-blogged from AdFreak.
Following a fairly predictable public outcry and drubbing in the press, Hacienda Mexican Restaurants is ending a two-week-old billboard campaign in Indiana that featured a red cocktail and the headline, "We're like a cult with better Kool-Aid."
In case anyone missed the allusion to the 1978 mass-suicide tragedy at the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana—where the cyanide was actually served in Flavor-Aid—the Hacienda signs promised that the establishment's food is "To die for." A restaurant chain bold enough to associate itself with poison, misery and death? Yum, I'll have seconds! Client marketing chief Jeff Leslie explains: Our role is not to be controversial or even edgy. We want to be noticed—and there's a difference." He realized, a bit too late, that 33 years on is still too soon for this kind of humor. "It went the wrong direction, hit a nerve, and we have come to realize we should not have done this billboard," he says.