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-flavoured punch in a mass murder and suicide in the group’s compound in the South American nation of Guyana.
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.”
