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!?

go justine! what is bizarre is that no-one thought to read the comments that were to be used first.

danny dyer effect

lol
"such as mums.net" NO YOURE WRONG, AHHH

Justine on TV now - explained how MrsR spotted the status message.

Has explained how Coca-Cola did pull the campaign, and how bad it was that the Facebook privacy had to be lowered to public access.

Marketing person hinted at Coca-Cola not being up to date on things being mentioned on the net.

Is that GOK in the background??

OK. The anchorman has started by saying that CocaCola 'accidentally' allowed this to be put on her profile. they have asked for a comment from Justine, who has said given a quick recap of the story from MN's point of view, and she has made the point that in oder to take part in the competition kids were required to disable their privacy settings. An internet media expert is speaking about how MN and other websites are working as internet police to expose this kind of stuff.

Justine is being asked what she thinks about the situation, and she's saying that we need to ask brands to act responsibly or they will end up with egg on their face.

Egg on your face

Well said Justine!

It wasnt one that slipped thru..there were other references as well. Would have been nice to get that across as well.

Thank you Fellatio and others, this is great, the most compulsive thread I have ever followed!

And hurrah for Justine, well done for going on Sky.

I've been lurking since the beginning of the thread.

MrsR, well done for taking this further.

Justine, I just saw the Sky news interview, thank you, very well explained.

strandedatasea thanks for that clarification. I am absolutely horrified. Will be watching sky news later.

Yes exactly HouseofCrazy this is just one mother who checked - hoe many kids now know about this who slipped through the net? Mine for example? I want to ask them, but I don't want to draw attention to it unnecessarily - they are boys 15 and 17. They WILL look!

aah missed Sky news, will it be on again?

Mrs R well said... not opinion, fact

another fact...

Jimbo and Lee are a bit thick

and someone on here has been racist towards IT people pmsl

Thank you so much for doing that Justine.
It is hugely appreciated.

just re-read what I wrote - I don't mean this is great that this was ever posted on FB, I mean having running commentary on Sky news interview is great..sorry, should read before I post!

What's the worst that could happen? Finding out your mom has actually seen the film 2 girls 1 cup and knows exactly what it is when she logs on and sees it on your FB status.

The odds are the ones doing the promotion had no idea what it was or meant (the vast majority of us haven't even heard of the film). More than likely down to 1 person out of 100s involved in the promotion who's seen the film and thought it'd be funny. While a company might approve of a campaign I'm pretty sure they don't read every single status that is put in the shuffler.

I'm not trying to be ugly about this - just pointing out the obvious.

Just posting my support again for you MrsR - unfortunately the tiny minority of haters are more vocal than the silent majority who agree with you. Don't take ranters on the internet to heart (unless its Dittany, networkguy et al ). As you said, they pulled the competition before the press truly got hold of it, so they have acknowledged it was wrong and you were right - thats all that matters.

Lee is nothing to do with me, I'm still watching this thread silently to see what happens.

SoftlyWalking you are right of course - there will always be an element of unavoidable human error in everything, but I do think that a company who has made many billions on the back of cynically targeting children with a basically unhealthy product should learn to tread mcuh much more carefully. They have the money and the resources and the expertise to mean that there is really no excuse for this kind of slip-up. They will have some of the sharpest marketing/corporate law people in the world working for them. This should not have happened - their cries of innocence and misunderstanding are not really cutting it, TBH.

Loving some of the twitter messages in the box on the right.

"MumsnetTowers RT @vtraveller: To me, Mumsnet is an inspiration of putrid vile for bad parenting."

Softly Walking, when I was an inhouse lawyer every single line of the company's copy had to come through legal and if we didn't understand something it had to be explained to us. Either their legal team were not shown this or someone lied to them about what it meant. Saying that they don't check everything is ridiculous. Coca Cola's legal team should have seen every line they were going to make public (unless someone deliberately withheld it). The worrying thing is that "100s" of people got to give their input/approval to such a campaign and no-one picked up on this.

The worst that could happen is that some wierdo gets hold of your child's personal info because they've lowered the privacy settings, in order that a company can make money out of exposing under 18s to highly inappropriate sexual material.

I have followed this with interest and add my support to MrsRickman for taking action.