Need help with a very sensitive complaint against a massive multinational!

[MrsRickman]

Ok, here goes.
Coca Cola are running a promo via their Dr Pepper brand just now on facebook. It is called 'status takeover' and involves the application putting an embarrassing or funny status on your FB page.
My 14 yo dd participated and I was HORRIFIED to log into FB and see that her status read - 'I watched 2 girls one cup and felt hungry afterwards'. For anyone who doesn't know what this means, please stay ignorant, for those who do, you can imagine how I felt. This was compounded later on when a quick search through dds internet history revealed she had tried to find out what it was for herself. Thankfully, our ISP has a wonderful child filter!!
So, after various emails and phonecalls to CocaCola marketing I have been offered (quite offensively) as way of compensation, a night in a hotel and theatre tickets for the West End. Fat lot of use to me, we live in Glasgow.
So, how do I proceed? ASA? I am absolutely fizzing with rage and disgust, and want a full apology and explanation. CocaCola are saying they use outside marketing teams for different brands and it's outside their jurisdiction. Help!?

The facebook thread linked to above, with lots of people asking where their statuses have gone has now got loads of feedback to their comments from Dr Pepper, thanking people for saying how much they liked it, saying there's more great stuff in the pipeline, etc, but no answer to those people who asked why it ended.

have only just found and read this thread from start to finish. Want to say thank you and big respect to Mrs Rickman for having the courage and moral conviction to take action and not give in to Coke's pretty desperate damage limitation bribe.

Just stumbled across this threat and am and that no one, no "creative" or Coke decision maker thought this campaign ill advised, and down right dangerous and offensive.

MrsR - well done for forcing the issue on this one. As if a night out would have sorted this?! Talk about misjudging the situation, from beginning to end.

The more I think about this today, the one cup references to 14y olds aside, what the hell were Coca Cola/Dr Pepper thinking encouraging teenagers to make their facebook profiles public/hijackable - completely against all standard internet safety guideline?

The Guardian is already running the story on its website. Other websites have picked it up too.

Agree with Preghead, while the porn stuff gives great copy, really hope the media make a fuss about the dangers of Coca Cola encouraging youngsters to leave their profiles open.

Been following this (well done MrsR) and just found Guardian article

gruniad article here. It's hardly ground-breaking. And the other examples of status updates he quotes are very tame. The ones on that page someone linked to further down are much, much worse.

Oh well, at least the promotion got pulled. MN rules again!

Ha! Triple x-post!

Guardian article already online here

onadietcokebreak will you be namechanging?

OMG Im going to have to arent I??!!!!

BTW I am not a troll- I am a regular- I promise!

Hmmn, must have taken them all of 3 minutes to write that article. Not very in-depth, is it?

Well done Mrs Rickman.

BTW - just a thought - you can ask MNTowers to change all your old posts into a different name if you don't want to be searchable - i.e. if you want to tell people you know that you are the one who got this promotion stopped but if you don't want them to come and search for Mrs Rickman on here!

Annielobeseder - I agree, the examples he has used are very tame, and make it sound like one "slipped through the net" rather than the many examples linked to here, which suggested a more extensive smutty to pornographic range of statuses.

Nice big fat Dr Pepper brand logo at the top of the article as well, who said there was no such thing as bad publicity.....

Guardian article very poor! God, this story deserves much more.

It would be perfect for Campaign but I expect they will be on it already.

Have just found and read the entirety of this thread. Shocking and disgusting. Well done Mrs Rickman, lets hope we don't see the likes of this again.

I dont think the article highlighted how offensive this actually was. I think they need to rewrite a little and show how much damage could have een done.

its going global

MrsR I would suggest a namechange!

What a pathetic article. Why didn't he use other porn related examples to make his point, there were plenty of them.

I sent Vikram Dodd a text asking him to reconsider using the name of the poster, the mention of Glasgow and the daughter being 14 yrs old. Makes DD a bit of a target of those on FaceBook unhappy promotion and "status takeover" stopped so abruptly. Especially as there is no detailed explanation of the why aspect.

I hope some other paper picks up the story - that article was rubbish! Way too tame, and makes it sound like a harmless joke, and that complaining about it spoiled everyone's fun. Totally misrepresented the enormity of it all.

Well done MrsR & thank you for taking your time & stress levels to put this situation right.

I will only be buying cocacola brands again if they fund a campaign on internet safety & give lots of cash to a kids charity.

Also, I dont like how the Guardian depicts the OP as being a bit of an overprotective parent. It is not said as such but implied in their wording and the other examples they used and how they didnt highlight the extent of the filth iyswim? And @was hailed as a hero on MN' as if we were all just a bunch of whingers. Or I could be overreading this!! Gah! MUCH more needs to be said about how bad this was!

The references are too disgusting to print in a paper - just hows how wrong it was to put such filth on a kids facebook page.