Tecate Decides That Pro-Public Urination Billboard Was Maybe Not A Good Idea

UPDATE: Looks like the San Francisco billboard was not an isolated incident. Consumerist reader Matt spotted one on the corner of Indiana and Union Pacific Ave. in East L.A. and sent us the photo at the bottom of the post.

Earlier this week, the folks at Tecate beer took some heat for a billboard ad in San Francisco that seems to imply that the trees of this world are intended to be used as public restrooms. Realizing that maybe this is not the greatest of PR moves, the company has responded by taking the oversized ad down.

The billboard was first spotted on The Tens Tumblr page and then reported by SFist.com, which also managed to bring it to the attention of Team Tecate.

The beer company responded:

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.

Within a day of that post going live, the ad had already been pulled down and replaced with a billboard for some school initiative.

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Here is the photo of the billboard spotted by Matt in East L.A.:

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