So apparently Starbucks have ‘partnered’ with mermaids

I saw the ad yesterday

I have no words.

Screenshot fodder perhaps?

Weird posts recently from certain people who keep declaring that ‘we’ should do something

I don’t take orders from randoms off the internet, how about you?

Living in London I dread to think how many Starbucks I could call "local".

But yes interesting point about their customer demographics. Absolutely not for the coffee snobs! One of my locals seems to mainly have older people in it. The other coffee shops are the artisan type and packed with young people and mothers with buggies. In Starbucks branches nearer schools I often see loads of teens in the afternoon. They do a huge range of extremely sweet & calorific non coffee drinks that are surely designed to appeal to kids. Promoting Mermaids to this demographic is worrying as many kids will have also received ideologically biased training in school.

People won’t know what they are buying unless it is blazed across the packaging. Tell people - I have - and let them choose where to spend their money.

This takes me back to my student days. But then it was boycott companies who invested in the apartheid, or sold sub standard products to the poor in developing countries. Now it’s this.

What does the core Starbucks demographic in the UK look like? Where I live it's mostly people who don't like coffee all that much (because there are tons of artisanal hipster blah blah alternatives, as well as better chains both small and large) so are ordering their coffee milkshake things with 27 ingredients, or people who're looking for free wifi and a place to work for a while. It's sort of the place you go when every other alternative is shut or too far to get to. Is it mostly the kind of woke young people who would tend to approve of Mermaids anyway? Is it older adults? In order to put together an effective pushback we'd need to know who to target, ie. what does the customer group Starbucks would most like to retain look like?

Mermaids is a harmful charity to children who are far to young to have a "sex change".

We should mass complain to Starbucks.

...And money goes to mermaids.

Call yourself what you like.

I'm with @saraclara on this one - I've just watched the advert, I'm not sure what exactly is wrong with it?
There's no safeguarding concerns, he's a transman just going into a coffee shop and saying his name?

So 50p per gruesome biscuit is donated.

I suggest everyone takes a nice shiny 50p and donated it to something good.

Glad you liked it @OhHolyJesus. 5 years at art school paid off eventually...

Back in my day, out CSR was staff going to local schools to read to the kids, buying local kids sports team new T-shirt’s, supplying the prizes for a chess tournament, encouraging staff to GAYE (give as you earn), having a benevolent society, getting staff to ‘adopt a pensioner’ (yes really)...

I like your version Lord and here's another alternative.

content warning*

please do not watch if you don't like post surgery images.

Charities have been partnering with corporates for years Blid but there’s been a definite push over the last 10 years from corporates to be far more front and centre in the partnerships. It’s no longer enough to donate behind the scenes or sponsor a ball or do some pro bono legal stuff. They want big adverts so they can write about how caring they are in the Corporate Social responsibility bit of their annual report. I would be 99% certain that Starbucks paid for that advert

If I didn't know that there was a subtext about sterilising children, I'd think that ad was just about a young woman who doesn't like her name, so she changes it.

Wonder how much the ad cost?

Is this also a new thing by charities? Slight tangent but I heard adverts on the radio recently talkinga about loneliness and it was PG Tips advertising their partnership with Samaritans.

Not sure I'm fond of this new trend.

Every name's a story ... the story of mastectomies and sterilisation?

So why not have:

Inside a local Starbucks, Anytown, Middle Englandshire.

It’s raining.

A cute barista steams his mugs and wipes down the foam nozzle on the coffee frother thingy.

Sad, slow plinky plonky/lily allen music plays.

The door opens

A young woman/girl - with cropped hair, rugby ball under her arm and a large spot at bag in the other steps inside and looks around.

Her team lost, and she is feeling sad.

Soggy, cold and caked in mud, her front tooth is missing.

She looks like she might stink a bit too.

She goes up to the counter and pauses.

What can I get you, young man?
Ummmm, errrr can I have a hot chocolate please?
Certainly sir - what’s the name?
“Jessica” thanks!

Music picks up, Jessica grins (tooth still missing) and picks up her hot chocolate.

Cup may say Jessica, Billy or D* (I’ve not yet decided how it’s going to go).

And cut - it’s a wrap.

Corporates understand you when your family doesn’t ?

Glitter family, innit.

Gender non conforming girls are actually boys ?

People called Gemma should not look like that ?

Corporates understand you when your family doesn’t ?

No it’s all fine by me And that’s before we get onto the grotesque horror of promoting the surgical transing of children.

Horizon is more about new developments in science. The Cook Report?

Horizon? I’m thinking 70s and 90s.

I thought the feminist branch wasn't anti-trans, but just concerned for women's rights?

Can I ask what you think is wrong with that advert? It seems fine to me. I didn't see any mention of Mermaids on it. The story itself is simple and surely uncontroversial...assuming you're not transphobic?

Oh no - I didn’t mean by C4 (heaven forbid). I miss Panorama and what was the other one?

Dispatches? That is C4.