Zoo's New Ad Gets Some Negative Attention

SAN DIEGO -- San Diego Zoo officials said their latest ad campaign was not intended to offend anyone, but it has.

The advertisement promotes the zoo's newly reopened monkey exhibit.

The campaign's been going on for about a year now and has hit its first snag.

The latest ad in the campaign is a single page in the Union-Tribune, promoting the monkey exhibit. The newspaper did not receive any negative calls about it, and neither did 10News. The zoo received very few.

The idea behind the campaign is simple: If a monkey wanted to live at the world-famous San Diego Zoo, how would he get there?

The latest ad has a red crayon scribble on an application for American residency.

"Creating some humor, creating some fun to energize people was our intent," said zoo marketing director Ted Molter.

"It think it's horrible, despicable," said one San Diego resident.

"The timing is not great, considering what's going on in our country on a large issue involving humans," said another resident.

Zoo officials apologized, saying the ad was approved long before the current immigration debate took center stage. Their intent is always to make animals and people happy.

"We had no way of predicting it would be taken out of context, but again, understanding that it was, we're sorry if that was the case, and that's why we chose to no longer run it," said Molter.

The monkey exhibit was one of the first to open at the 90-year-old zoo. It's always one of the most popular sites at the zoo, and zoo officials hopes it will continue to be.

A representative at the Union-Tribune said the ad ran only once, and it was only supposed to run once.

The zoo confirms that and said it will not be scheduled for more.