As it turns out, warning men to stay away from “marginally good-looking” girls and “creepy older” women via drink coasters and flyers isn’t the best way to promote an important public health issue.

That’s a lesson that the Tennessee Governor's Highway Safety Office (GHSO) brutally and expensively learned this week, as it was forced to pull an anti-DUI campaign that bore the aforementioned slogans after a wave of outrage from both Tennessee residents and lawmakers.

Known as the “100 Days of Summer Heat Booze It or Lose It” campaign, it had only begun in full earnest this past weekend, with black-and-red coasters sent to various bars that read “Buy a drink for a marginally good-looking girl only to find out she's chatty, clingy, and your boss's daughter,” on one side and, “If this sounds like something you would do, your judgment is impaired and so is your driving,” on the other.

Other flyers, as reported by The Tennessean , laid out vignettes in which a drunk man decides to not drive home nor to go home with a creepy older woman. "They were anti-feminist,” Tiffany Cannon, a 25-year-old waitress working at Charlie Bob’s Restaurant in Nashville, TN, when she saw the slogans, told The Tennessean. “It was ridiculous and rude to both genders."

It’s an description that local lawmaker John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) was more than happy to agree with. "I am calling on Governor Haslam to disavow this offensive and ill-conceived marketing campaign concocted by the Governor's Highway Safety Office," Clemmons wrote in a statement released Tuesday morning. "It is not only offensive, but it is also inexcusable and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Frankly, I am furious."

By Monday, the Governor’s Office issued a statement on the campaign, blaming the faux pas on a misguided attempt to be one of the cool guys. “Because one of the goals of many Booze It and Lose It campaigns is to reach our high risk driving population, the marketing is often edgy and designed to grab the attention of the young male demographic,” the statement read. ”It was never the intent of the GHSO to be insensitive or insulting to women.”

The statement further ensured that the GHSO would immediately begin the laborious process of recalling their materials -- the original campaign had cost more than $77,000 to create and distribute, provided entirely through federal funding.

Not to be lost in the buffoonery of this entire mess is the urgent need for preventative and effective anti-DUI policies in Tennessee.

According to the Department of Homeland Security and Safety , the state saw more than 8,000 citations for DUI handed out by the Highway Patrol last year, nearly double the rate recorded in 2011. The number of alcohol-related traffic crashes has remained fairly steady for the past half-decade at around 7,000 annually .

Hopefully, the second time will be the charm.