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!?

Well, you know, i'd rather my child saw something like 2girls1cup than spent her/his life getting fatter and fatter drinking coca cola and eating mcdonalds and eventually dying of a painful obesity related illness. People put so much effort into closing things like the dr pepper status takeover, if only the same effort was put into something useful the world might not contain things like the video you're trying so desperately to stop your children from watching.

The real atrocity here is that people put coca cola into their bodies in the first place.

Petty is the word that comes to mind. If you wanna make a difference to your childrens lives, go and stop the oil leaking into the ocean which will eventually kill them anyway. Go and stop driving your cars around, slowly suffocating it's inhabitants so you can get your shopping home from Tescos a bit more easily. Go do something useful, for fucks sake.

Oh dear Jimbo.
Next you'll be resorting to Godwin's Law

MrsRickman. Laurie is very interested. Can you email her asap.

Jimbo - are you suggesting that because a company makes products of limited nutrional value aimed at children we should expect that their marketing departments will not consider whether using pornography in their marketing to children? Because that seems a bit of a stretch.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect to be able to trust content from major corporations aimed at teenagers to be content that would be generally considered to be acceptable for teenagers.

Bye bye Jimbo, I guess you'll be off to do something useful for fuck's sake.

When did we start feeling that we have to almost apologise for not liking pornography? Or of being upset by it? Or made angry by it? I am in my late 40s and I grew up with the cultural view that pornography was not accptable and that using sex to sell anything, let alone to children, was in very poor taste. Pornography was something hidden and shameful, used by men in dirty raincoats. So what happened? How did it happen that now young girls and women are obliged to almost defend the very images that debase and dehmunaise them whilst actually recording the abuse of the 'models/stars' themselves??? I have read things here like, I am open minded/I am liberal...etc. Well I personally don't care how uncool it is, or how un-liberal it makes me look, I absolutely loathe pornography - everything about it...from the cutesy, media-friendly tag 'porn', to the pernicious way it finds its way into my life without being invited. I hate it on a political, ethical and personal level. I hate it on a cultural level. But what absolutely horrifies me is how I can stop my son's view of women and sex from being completely skewed and warped to the point that the type of pornography referenced to on this thread becomes just a laugh.

And what exactly is "useful" about how you are spending your time here on MN, Jimbo?

dittany - you are misrepresenting Laurie Penny. Don't be so ridiculous.

Oh and while I'm posting on mumsnet I'm not driving my car so that's a win all round. I might not drive my car while eating my dinner later.

I suggest you stop typing RIGHT NOW and get that VSO form sent off.

Lol lol lol Jimbo. You are funny!

Are you telling me you've never consumed a coke product in your life? Never drunk a Fanta? A Bacardi Breezer? A Calypso juice drink? A Minute Maid carton of juice?

Good for you sport!

And tell you what, why don't you go away, have kids, come back to mumsnet, and I'll offer you the choice of giving them a minute maid juice or a viewing of the Two Girls film.

Let's see if you've changed your mind.

Good luck.

last post from me i think so ill answer what i can currently see and leave it at that

"I'm an IT professional and don't remember viewing or defending porn being part of the job description." i doubt you being an IT tech in that case

tabouleh - on 4 hours sleep not very well no

LeninGrad - a good point, i was just amazed to see so many people fexated on this issue i had to put my view across and kill some time

dittany - yes i should be out solving the big issues as should we all but just like you im lazy so i talk my self out of really helping with the big issues and just giving money to charity insted,

however if you do want to care about the big issues then do watch "the high cost of low prices" then go watch some other documentarys buy a book or two, and tell me that you still care about this issue half as much.

p.s this post has not been spell checked as i have said i am dyslexic so if you requier an inigma mechine to decrypt it i am sorry.

i hope you all have a nice day

Well hey lenin, I mean, why protest against anything when we're probably all going to die of global warming?

I think we should all submit our list of things we feel strongly about to Jimbo, and he'll tell us whether we're allowed to be bothered about them.

I mean, personally I try to eat free-range meat because I don't like animals suffering, but I expect that's petty because we're all going to run out of oil in a few centuries.

And I try not to let my kids get run over by cars when crossing the road, but if you come to think of it, that's pretty petty too when you consider that the earth will probably be consumed by the sun in a few thousand millennia.

Jimbo, what in your view would be an acceptable and non-petty level of concern?

seapig - I'm with you.....

"i'd rather my child saw something like 2girls1cup than spent her/his life getting fatter and fatter drinking coca cola and eating mcdonalds and eventually dying of a painful obesity related illness."

Jimbo - the two words which spring to my mind about such a statement are "misguided" and "pathetic".

If you really think that way, I honestly hope you have no children, or if you do, that they grew up before such a strange sense of priorities was passed on to them, and would see your current point of view as being far from normal.

If it wasn't a multi-national corporation, it would be one of their friends.

You shouldn't feel angry. You do what few parents do. You look after your kid's well being. You're proactive in their life.

The world contains a lot of things people don't like. You can't tell someone else what is and is not appropriate for them to view. Only they can make that decision.

Arm your kids with knowledge. You can't shelter them forever. They will find things and experience them whether you like it or not. Keep the channels of communication open, and make sure they talk to you when they need to. Don't put dogma into their heads. Try and let them make as many choices as they can for themselves. Simply help them when they need it.

'She states quite clearly that porn should be made to be shown to children in schools although things like bestiality and rape porn should be limited to the over-18s.'

dittany - you are a liar. Laurie Penny doesn't mention bestiality at all. What she does say though is:

'If we really want to reduce violent and sexual crime against women, only a radical re-think of our attitude to pornography, encompassing a long, hard look at our social and sexual mores, will cut it. A warped, limited and misogynist cultural sex-narrative is the problem, but censorship is definitively not the answer.'

Mrs Rickman - I think that you will need to read the article that dittany linked to in full - as I don't think what dittany said about it was an accurate reflection.

Dittany - maybe Mrs Rickman is not totally anti-porn as such - Laurie Penny's article is along the lines of "Porn should be reformed, not banned".

She says "I would restrict so-called ?extreme? pornography ? pornography that includes, for example, violent BDSM games, rape and abuse fantasy or necrophilia ? to over 18s".

The reference to "joyful" pornography being shown in schools does seem a bit out there but it is part of a provocative article which takes a different look at the problem of porn.

"If it wasn't a multi-national corporation, it would be one of their friends."

Yes - and you know what - that would be FINE because their friends are also 14 years old and don't know any better.

It's somewhat different when it's a huge multinational corporation, with adults using this stuff to make money out of children.

Don't you think?