Restaurant pulls billboards with cult reference

SOUTH BEND, Indiana - A restaurant that erected billboards referring to the 1978 Jonestown cult massacre in which more than 900 people died has removed the signs following complaints that the signs were offensive.

The billboards included the statement, "We're like a cult with better Kool-Aid," over a glass containing a mixed drink, as well as the phrase "To die for!"

In November 1978, more than 900 members of Jim Jones' People's Temple drank cyanide-laced, grape-flavored punch in a mass murder and suicide in the group's compound in the South American nation of Guyana.

30 Years Later, Jonestown's Horror Endures
Video: The Jonestown Tragedy

Jeff Leslie, vice president of sales and marketing at Hacienda restaurant, acknowledged that the billboards were a mistake. He said the South Bend, Indiana-based company ordered the signs removed less than two weeks into Hacienda's new advertising campaign.

"Our role is not to be controversial or even edgy. We want to be noticed — and there's a difference," Leslie told 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."

Patricia Barbera-Brown of South Bend, who lives a few blocks away from one of the billboards, said she was so shocked when she initially read the message that she drove around the block.

"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."

She sent an e-mail to Hacienda's executive telling them the billboards weren't "funny at all," calling them "extremely offensive and very irresponsible marketing."

Hacienda executives responded in writing, apologizing for offending her and informing her that the billboards would be taken down.

[Harden_Tar]

The Jonestown ad campaign problably just beat out the Holocaust at Hacienda headquarters advertising offices. Morons. Decisions like these are made by groups of people. I cannot believe that several people sat around a table and said referring to Jonesdtown was a good idea.

[jena13]

Evidently Hacienda also owns the La Senorita restaurant chain in Northern Michigan because they posted the same billboards. The last one is supposed to be removed by Friday as they caused the same reaction and boycotts until they're taken down.

It is just reprehensible to anyone who remembers the horrors of that tragedy and I agree, whoever came up with and approved this marketing campaign should be fired.

[tsigili]

Whoever approved those ads in the first place, needs to find another line of work.

[Janfebmarapr]

And the winner of the dumbest most ignorant stupid dumb rear end ad campaign of the year is........opens envelope...
"Hacienda!"
(Attendees give Applause)