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!?

I like the fact they refer to the mumsnet user as 'a Mrs Rickman.' I'm guessing your name is not actually Mrs Rickman, MrsR, but that you are a fan of Alan Rickman and the username is a joke? lol.

The guardian article also states 'As part of the promotion, supposedly embarrassing messages would be posted under the user's name, which could be seen by friends entitled to view their Facebook profile.' Uh, no - part of the problem is that Dr Pepper encourages the users to make their profile public. That is part of the problem.

At least the Orlando summary doesn't give name or city.

Will request my previous post is 'zapped' too.

I sent the reporter a text asking him to reconsider using the name of the poster, the city name, and the teenager's age.

Makes teenager a bit of a target of those on FaceBook unhappy that the promotion and "status takeover" stopped so abruptly, especially as there is no detailed explanation of the why aspect.

Anyone good at writing?? Bet someone would be willing to publish a better one if someone wrote it!

Gosh BathBuns - I didn't realise that they actually encouraged the profiles to be public. That, in itself, is very wrong in terms of internet safety.

There a couple of really good brand/marketing people on mn. Not sure if they have been on this thread.

I love the way that so many people think OP is actually called mrs rickman.
what does alan make of all this I wonder?

that guardian piece is pretty feeble

I would love to give writing it a go, but I don't think any big paper will use anyone outside someone on their current staff, sadly.

Vikram Dodd - could do better

Examples were poor and not remotely indicative of the line in question, and pushing the overly-concerned parent angle was a bit lazy.

Why no mention of the public statuses? Or the masturbatory example given?

Huge applause to MrsR.

I wonder how big this will get?

in fact it is very feeble

14 yo
scat porn
open profiles

gah

and xposts bathbuns

exactly bluecardi. It makes teenagers so vulnerable having their profiles public. Imagine how many must have mobile phone numbers, e-mails addresses, photos of themselves in bikinis. Shudder. Coupled with references to porn in their status updates, put there by Dr Pepper, and the chance for some attempt at grooming/abuse to occur is frighteningly high.

Feeble indeed, the last half read like a press release from DrP.

ISNT

Whether her name or not, it might make sense for OP to change name after this. No guarantee reporter has actually spoken to her - there's plenty enough info posted on this thread to write an article.

Had not noticed the lack of detail about Dr Pepper promotion requiring Facebook privacy controls to be dropped to bare minimum. Considering the ages of the intended participants, that's completely irresponsible.

(Admittedly, the only way they can be sure of the status being shown, but means the whole project should have been left dead in the water and not gone live. Are you taking this in, Ms Branston ?)

It's so sickening & dangerous. How did cocacola think it agood idea? It's so wrong.

I bet they'd use an article if someone posted it here - if not Guardian, then another paper. Specially if someone posted it on a blog or whatever. Could write to the Guardian to say why that was such a feeble excuse, and how they've potentially lost a huge story by making it seem like nothing. And then send them a properly written article! Shame I can't do it - I'm way too wordy for that. But I bet someone here would be good.

Well, I am a bit disappointed in Mr Dodd. I emailed him as soon as I saw his message, when I was still rather shaken about the whole thing and told him I would need a bit of time to calm down and speak to my daughter before I could speak to him directly. He obviously has no patience and wanted to be first with the story. Shame.
Incidentally, he asked me 'why MrsRickman'? to which I replied - doesn't every woman want to be Mrs Alan Rickman?
Maybe he doesn't know who Alan Rickman is?

What's really scary is that there are people out there - 'professional' people, people with influence, people with the means to reach into your life - who are so disconnected from basic human decency and from any concept of responsibility, that they think for a second that such things are in any way acceptable or appropriate.

That is bloody frightening.

Please keep getting outraged, everyone - it's our only protection against this stuff.

Re the Guardian article, it's a great shame that the only quote from this thread is Mrs R's one about the offer of theatre tickets being no good as she doesn't live near London. That was actually just an aside, and I'm sure meant to be darkly ironic, given that it was insulting in terms of lack of apology and action (at the time) to remove the offensive material. This doesn't come across in the piece at all.

There are some hugely relevant comments which COULD have been chosen from the thread, including many by Mrs R herself.

Don't worry about the article, I am sure Vikram just wanted to get something out before anyone else picked it up, so he probably just wrote what he could for the website. He is almost certainly hoping Mrs R herself will speak to him, if not, then he will be desperately looking for more victims of the status takeover.

I am quite sure there will be bigger and better articles tomnorrow, once journalists are back at their desks after the weekend and have time to do more research.

I spoke to my DH about this who has had the misfortune to have had to watch porn like this for his job. He said he would be more worried about what other vidoes people googling this one would find as apparently what came after 2 Girls etc is even worse....I didn't want to know what he meant, just hearing about this one was enough for me.

Well done Mrs R. This is a great example of how social networking can be used in a really positive way. Rather than the dismal way Coca Cola/Dr Pepper have attempted to use it....

The sad thing is that unless care is taken, this will just be spun as 'mums getting carried away and being overprotective' and of course no publicity is bad publicity for Dr Pepper. Lots of yoofs, ie the type of person who actually came up with this campaign, will see this as hilarious and go out and buy tons of the stuff. Thats why, Vikram and other journos lurking, this needs to be written about properly. Tell it how it is. This isn't just porn. Its hideous, hardcore, demeaning, abusive porn.