This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.
One day long ago I found myself standing in line at the unemployment office behind a man with a t-shirt that featured a version of Da Vinci's famous painting, the Last Supper. However, in place of Jesus, Elvis sat in the center, surrounded, not by apostles, but country and western singers. Our society had been rather tolerant of parodies of this iconic painting, until the Folsom Street Fair went over the line, taking its sponsor, Miller Beer, with it.
The San Francisco fair is the culminating event of "Leather Pride Week," and the poster advertising showed a group in Last Supper pose, garbed (scantily) in leather, including dominatrix, a man in a leather dog mask, and many pec and bountiful bosoms. As you might imagine, the image didn't travel well beyond the SF city limits, and particularly offended the Catholic League, which launched a boycott of Miller Beer.
The League would not be appeased with a simple apology, either; it wanted contrition, for Miller to issue a condemnation of the more unsavory activities associated with the event. Miller moved quickly to remove its name from the poster and the event, and issued a statement, part of which read, "we are aware of other disrespectful activities, objects and groups association with or present at the fair which, like the promotional poster, violate our marketing policies."
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