Local giant brewers Red Stripe have apologised for the publication of offensive remarks in a magazine promoting the company's Red Hot Summer promotion.

The Red Hot Summer magazine.

"There was a publication that came out in our name, supporting our summer programme, Red Hot Jamaica, and in that publication there were certain articles that caused offence to a number of people," said the company's managing director Mark McKenzie. "I have looked at it and my position is I agree with them. Certain things in the article could be considered offensive, and I'm certainly appalled and very unhappy that such a thing went out in the name of Red Stripe."

The company has been coming under light flak for the publication, 15,000 of which were printed and circulated mostly to consumers.
The magazine lists the publisher as Robinson Entertainment Media. The offensive paragraph appears in a section describing the differences between all-inclusive and regular parties and states, under the all-inclusive section, "if you're (sic) family is predominantly black you could get lucky and find a mate at the party, and your kids would end up mixed/light skin-did" (sic).

The comment has angered some people, mostly among the upper middle-class, who have been e-mailing their comments to the media and, apparently to Red Stripe.

Last week, McKenzie told the Sunday Observer that when he was made aware of the problem, he personally took charge of it by responding in person to everyone who contacted Red Stripe with either a query or a complaint.

"I have personally written to everybody who we have received a complaint or an enquiry from to apologise to them and to explain to them what we are doing," said McKenzie. "I have taken personal control of it because I think it's something of such a magnitude that affects the reputation and the image of a great company and I certainly am not going to let this thing get any worse. I want to assure people that I'm taking it very seriously."

McKenzie, who was abroad when he learnt of the issue, explained that the publication resulted from a breakdown in the company's monitoring processes. "Because of that, we want to apologise to anybody who was offended by this and make the statement that we are working to ensure that something like this never happens again," he said.

"We've stopped the distribution of the magazine," he added. "We've destroyed all the other copies that existed (about 8,000). Beyond that, we're gonna be doing an investigation. I've already started that personally. We've invited an expert in our Diageo Marketing Code from England to come here and investigate, to look at what's gone wrong, look at what we need to do differently to help put us back on the right path. I've also invited the head of corporate relations for Latin America to join in on that audit."

The investigators, he said, will arrive in the island during the week of September 10 and spend about two or three days.
"Our reputation as a company has been great over the years," said McKenzie. "We've been a good corporate citizen, we've done as much as we can for Jamaica in times of crisis and even in good times when people are in need and I think we have a good record in that, and I'd personally hate for anything like this to tarnish that record."

The probe, he added, will include a look at the relationship with the company that produced the magazine.

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