Belvedere Vodka blasted for sexual assault joke on ad

A Belvedere Vodka ad with a crude slogan had many customers taking shots — at the company.

The ad, which features a grinning man grabbing a terrified woman, uses the slogan "Unlike Some People Belvedere Always Goes Down Smoothly."

The ad instantly sparked outrage over the seeming implication of rape and went viral after it was posted Friday on the company's Facebook and Twitter sites.

The ad has since been scrubbed from both pages, but no before an initial apology made things worse, because fans said it didn’t address what they believed was the reference to rape.

"Belvedere Vodka, your apology is insufficient as it does not accept responsibility for promoting rape-culture," one commenter wrote on Belvedere’s Facebook page.

The company later released another apology.

"The post is absolutely inconsistent with our values and beliefs and in addition to removing the offensive post we are committed to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again," Jason Lundy, the company's senior vice president of global marketing, wrote on its Facebook page.

The company's president, Charles Gibbs, added later that they were making a donation to an American anti-sexual violence organization, RAINN.

“It should never have happened. I am currently investigating the matter to determine how this happened and to be sure it never does so again,” Gibbs wrote. “The content is contrary to our values and we deeply regret this lapse.”