A billboard campaign in B.C. for Coors Light Beer that mocked Toronto's reputation for social chilliness will be wound down after the company received complaints.

The campaign featured a can of the mass-produced beer with the text: "Colder than most people from Toronto."

It reportedly ran on about 30 billboards in Canada's westernmost province.

On the social messaging service Twitter, Molson Coors Canada spokesperson Ferg Devins wrote Tuesday: " Coors Light sincerely apologies to ANYONE who was offended by our Colder Than billboards in BC. We are removing ASAP."

Adam Moffat, the company's manager of brand and marketing public relations, told ctvtoronto.ca that the ad was "an attempt by us to play a local humour angle ... that there's a natural rivalry between east and west. And we tried to get at that in a lighthearted way, but it turned out that was taken offensively by quite a few people in Toronto."

The Toronto Star spoke with Newmarket resident Kathryn Morton, who actually grew up in Kamloops, B.C. -- a place where making fun of Toronto was commonplace.

"That's pretty insulting to such a large group of people," Morton, who saw the ad while on a camping trip out west, told the paper. "We hear stuff about Toronto people all the time but we couldn't believe anyone would put it on a billboard."

The complaints started after the Star story ran, Moffat said.

Filmmaker Albert Nerenberg, who brought Canada the documentary "Let's All Hate Toronto," told ctvtoronto.ca that he found the whole matter hilarious.

"I thought this billboard was dumb," he said, referring to the fact it said "most people from Toronto."

"It's like they're trying to be precise about things ... and you really are picking on 'most people from Toronto.' I thought it was purposefully insulting for no gain," he said.

Nerenberg said he also found it amusing that the billboard ad contained the logo of the 2010 Winter Olympics. "It's almost like Toronto-bashing is an Olympic sport!" he joked.

The genesis of his 2007 film came from a billboard, paid for anonymously by a Hamilton rock radio station, which simply said, "Toronto sucks."

Upon travelling the country, they learned it's really B.C. that hates Toronto the most, he said -- something that puzzled him as he wondered what could Toronto have done to them.

He learned it's a lot of little things, from televised NHL hockey games that start in the late afternoon to elections being decided before they go to the polls.

"Toronto to them is self-involved and cold," he said, but noted the same complaint has been directed at Vancouverites.

Nerenberg -- who has lived in Toronto and Montreal, among other places -- called Vancouver "astronomically boring. If Toronto was to do an equivalent billboard, it would be that Vancouver is more boring than ..." Saskatchewan? "Yeah, Saskatchewan!" he laughed.

Or that Coors beer in T.O. is colder than a Winnipeg winter, he said.

Interestingly, one Coors billboard in Toronto merely said the beer is colder than your girlfriend would be if she knew you were here.

There was no regional needling in its content. Moffat said there are no ads in Toronto that play on regional rivalries. "It was a western execution only."

There are "Colder Than" campaigns across the country with local content, but the Toronto gibe only ran in B.C. and not any other western province, he said.

"The lesson that we learned is that what is considered local can go national in a heartbeat," said Moffat, who lives in Toronto and added, "We're not making any excuses for this ad."

Nerenberg said from Coors' perspective, the ad must be seen as a great success, given the earned media attention it generated.

The company issues "a ton of communications as you would expect of a brewery this size," Moffat said. "Sometimes we misfire, and we're chalking this up to an effort that didn't hit the mark."