Tecate, the beer of choice for budget-conscious parkgoers who are all like "can we get something other than PBR?", has recently launched a pro-tree peeing ad campaign in the heart of the city's Mission District. As anyone who has ever heard more than a sentence of Spanish has probably figured out by now, the ad simply reads "BATHROOM" over an idyllic photo of a tree.
The rest of the text, our second grade-level Spanish tells us (and Google Translate confirms), reads: "It's easy to be a man of character." So the whole campaign is, as Uptown Almanac points out, some pretty next-level trolling from the ad team at Heineken International. They've even managed to work in a jab at their own competing cerveza subsidiary and that whole "Most Interesting Man" schtick.
Anyhow, remember to drain your beer nozzles in the appropriate receptacles, folks. It wouldn't be very easy to be a man of character if you end up on a Sex Offender registry for urinating in public. And anyway, there's a crackdown going on in the park, you know.
Update: A rep from Tecate's marketing team writes in to say this was all a big mix-up:
Hi all, this is Felix Palau, VP of Marketing for the Tecate Brand.We have an internal process whereby every ad is reviewed for compliance with our local code for responsible commercial communication. As a part of that process, this ad concept was rejected by our US team but unfortunately, an error was made and the ad was mistakenly released and posted. We sincerely thank consumers for bringing this to our attention and have immediately removed the ad. We regret the error and are taking a look at our internal controls to ensure this does not happen again.
Anyhow, the billboard has since been taken down.
