PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher

@guardian.co.tt

The lo­cal dis­trib­u­tors and mar­ket­ing team for Rude Boy has clar­i­fied that it had noth­ing to do with a con­tro­ver­sial bill­board which was re­cent­ly on dis­play in Kingston, Ja­maica.

The bill­board, which dis­played a bot­tle of the prod­uct in be­tween a woman’s legs adorned in fish net stock­ings, drew sig­nif­i­cant crit­i­cism as the im­age was placed not far from a school.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port in the Ja­maica Glean­er, the Kingston and St An­drew Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion (KSAMC) con­firmed the re­moval of the bill­board in Rock­fort, east­ern Kingston with­in 24 hours of ini­tial pub­lic back­lash.

How­ev­er, the top­ic con­tin­ued to trend on so­cial me­dia over the week­end in­to yes­ter­day, with some pages er­ro­neous­ly stat­ing that the bill­board was in Trinidad.

A search for the top­ic on Google last night pro­duces a dis­claimer which stat­ed, ‘Note: The re­sults in­di­cate this con­tro­ver­sy oc­curred in May 2026 in Ja­maica, and not in Trinidad and To­ba­go, as some mis­in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ed.”

An of­fi­cial from AS Bry­den’s, which is re­spon­si­ble for the dis­tri­b­u­tion and mar­ket­ing of the brand in T&T, con­firmed that the im­age on the bill­board did not come from this coun­try’s mar­ket­ing team nor did the TT team have any in­volve­ment in that cam­paign.

Rude Boy, a vod­ka-based ready-to-drink (RTD) brand, is head­quar­tered in Bar­ba­dos. The brand has been known for its #DrinkRude slo­gan and ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paigns across the re­gion.

Last Fri­day, dur­ing an event on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade in Port of Spain, so­ca star Nailah Black­man was un­veiled as the face of the brand in T&T. Two weeks ago, a Rude Boy ‘Rude Whisky’ bill­board in Be­lize fea­tur­ing the so­ca star in a biki­ni was al­so crit­i­cised in the that coun­try for its sug­ges­tive na­ture with church lead­ers in the Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­try urg­ing its re­moval.