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!?

tabouleh that is a FANTASTIC website!

Do you have children Jimbo?

Jimbo

As you see yourself as a Voice of Reason, please would you read the OP again.

You will observe that the OP had protected her child from porn by installing a good child filter on her PC. This meant that when her 14 year old daughter tried to google "two girls one cup" to find out the meaning of the line that the jolly old Coca Cola Corporation - the naughty little prankster! arf arf! - had stuck on her Facebook page for all to see - she couldn't find anything..

Forgive me for saying this but you don't sound as if you have children. However you might have heard of something called Bullying in Schools and be aware that it is considered rather bad. The sort of thing that happens sometimes is that not-very-nice boys and girls look at other people's Facebook pages to see if there is anything they can rip the piss out of. And if their parents don't have effective child filters on their computers, then they can easily look up a reference such as this. And then some poor girl gets called "the girl who likes shit porn" for the rest of her life at school.

I am sure that in your heart of hearts you may concede that this would not be the girl's fault, or her parents' fault.

Bibbity, can I apologise for that thread. Somebody, (on this thread if I rememeber) started talking about it and a couple of us advised her not to watch, but kind of egging her on. We were all adults, it was late at night and of course, none of us ref. it to children.
We were being immature. Having a bit of fun. There were ref to other weird pics too, most funny, some a bit gruesome.

I don't remember anybody calling you po-faced, but I'm sorry if we (collective) did.

I am absolutely against this, and would have called the police if it was my 14 yr old.

Also, my 13 yr old cousin goes on facebook, she hadn't signed up for this app, but if one of her firends did, she would see the porn ref. How are we as parents supposed to control that?

No, i don't. Does that in some way impede my ability to form coherent replies to your increasingly ridiculous arguments?

Jimbo, the child in question didn't know what it meant, and she did try to look it up.

Luckily her parents had installed parental controls on their computer, so she couldn't view the clip. However, her status update was public, all her friends (probably more 14yo girls) may have seen it, and they may have decided to google it and see what it was about..... Do you really not see the problem here?

sophable - I know - if only Dr Pepper had linked to that instead!

(in case anyone doesn't want to go back up thread it's Make Love Not Porn.

Stretch, this just takes us back to my previous post. You cannot control what is posted on your childs facebook, because it is comprised entirely of posts from other people. Therefore, if you don't like it, stop your child from using it, not everyone else.

If you had children you would be more able to understand where we are coming from with our concerns about the effect this might have on children. You definitely do feel more strongly about it when you have children of your own.

Sorry tabouleh some one loses your respect because they change their views when the assimilate new information forming new ideas which change pre existing beliefs?

You have just lost all of my respect you may have earned through this debate with me

It seems like some of you are saying a 14 year old might watch 2 girls 1 cup and instead of turning it off in disgust they will continue to watch it and even decide that its the norm? I don't think I would have reached the same conclusion at 14 maybe you should give your children a little more credit

Also your average 14 year old probably watches more porn in a week then your average adult in a month.

This has been blown way out of proportion, I'm happy to say a 14 year old probably shouldn't watch 2 girls one cup, however I'm willing to bet quite a lot of money I can find something worse on facebook its self not Google.

And please don't say "the point is a large company is doing this" large company's are always the ones that do bad things, if any of you have a chance watch "the high cost of low prices" to see how a big company can really be evil

To sum up is Dr pepper take over a bad thing? Maybe but lots of bad things happen maybe we should care about the big bad things then the little ones

"Does that in some way impede my ability to form coherent replies to your increasingly ridiculous arguments? "

Something is stopping you Jimbo, we are just paying you the compliment of assuming that it's because you haven't got children.

FWIW I know fuck all about Facebook and think to a certain degree anyone who posts their life on it then complains about people knowing all about their life are a bit stupid. BUT . . . if my children were old enough to use it, and someone put a comment on that was the name of some vile porn, encouraging them to look it up, I would take action.

• if it was a friend of theirs I would have words with their parents
• if it was an adult they knew I would go to the police
• if it was a multinational company I would want the individual responsible to lose their job and the company itself to lose millions in revenue

MrsRickman, just want to add my support. I've just managed to read most of the thread. How horrendous!

Depraved.

Oh dear...if I'd have known I was sipping my last Coke today, I'd have savoured it more

Absolutely unforgivable.

Oh for goodness sake.
For the record, I consider myself to be VERY vigilant about my daughter's internet use,hence -
I am a Fb friend of hers.
I am a regular Fb user.
I would not allow her a Fb profile UNLESS I was her friend on the site.
This is exactly why, only an hour after the status was posted I was able to react.
Did I object to her having the app? No, I didn't. Why? Because I foolishly trusted the Coca Cola brand.
Would I object to her looking at Two Girls One Cup on the internet? Yes, I would. Why? Because I am a responsible parent and don't want my girl seeing filth like that while she is impressionable.
I am not an idiot, I attend one of the most respected Universities in Europe, I am not a hysterical mum, I have a duty of care to protect my daughter until such time that she is no longer a minor and can make her own decisions, I am not a 'Daily Mail reader', I abhorr the idea of passing judgement on other people's lifestyle choices and I am certainly not buying any of this bull crap that there is a single parent on Earth who would be happy to let their child know about this material.

MrsRickman - contact the journalist Laurie Penny and she will publicise this for you and you will be able to stay anon. She writes for the Guardian among other publications.

[email protected]

I'm sorry that this company has abused your daughter like this.

Drew, it's like 10 yr olds watching violence on TV, very soon, nothing will shock them and they search for even more violence. This has been proven, and the reason why there are age limits in place.

Look Jimbo you are entirely missing the point here.

If Coke had wanted to do this promotion aimed at adults, or students, no-one here would be batting an eyelid. We are not "outraged moms" pissing on everyone's snowball for the fun of it.

The problems is not about Coke wishing (for whatever bizarre reasons of their own) to make humorous references to hardcore porn.

This is about a huge company DELIBERATELY targeting children with offensive material, compromising their safety, and all for the sake of profit.

The pre-release material for this campaign makes it very clear that it was specifically designed and marketed with teens and children in mind.

This is not a debate about the place of porn on the web or the right of people to tell dubious jokes. If Coke had aimed this campaign at adults I probably wouldn't be laughing, but I wouldn't really care either way.

But they didn't. This about a company trying to profit from children, and abusing their trust in the process.

Do you honestly, honestly think that's ok?

Full support & rerspect to Mrs Rickman & agree with earwicga who says she's sorry your dd was abused by this big company.

lllDrewlll - gawd do you not do irony?

BalloonSlayer, I think that Drew would prefer that you did not raise it with the parents, police or company. He would rather you got on with fixing the big problems, instead of trying to protect your child.

However I think when you are a parent, protecting your child becomes the big problem and everything else pales into insignificance beside that.

FWIW, I'm an IT professional and don't remember viewing or defending porn being part of the job description.

And Drew, so what if large companies "always" do bad things? What the hell kind of argument is that?

Does that make it alright for Coke to do this, because they are a huge multinational and therefore (in your head) apparently beyond moral judgement?

Of course it doesn't.

And clearly Coke don't think that they are beyond moral judgement either, or they wouldn't have pulled the comp. They were sensible enough to realise that what they were doing was highly irresponsible, not in keeping with the corporate image they want to convey, and morally dubious.

Pity they didn't realise all that when MrsR initially contacted them. If they'd responded better, and more sensibly in the first place then maybe this could all have been avoided and the competition could have continued to run in a more sensible form.

Coke were the idiots here in not admitting their "snafu" in the first place and striving to put it right. The fact that the story has hit the papers is entirely their own fault.