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!?

Randommuse, that is beyond doubt one of the most patronising posts I have ever read on mn.

Well done MrsR. I can imagine cocacola PR people working all hours to do some serous damage limitation here. Really well done to you. And to mn. I know how a supportive thread like this can really encourage you.

I agree twofalls - I'm amazed at the relatively low profile, given that it's been knocking around for a couple of days now. I really think there is a hive of panicky activity going on at Coca Cola right now. Hopefully after appearance in the Telegraph and Sky news things will ramp up a bit.

RandomMuse...what an utter waste of screen time your ridiculous post was

I cannot even be arsed to pick up on all the things that were wrong with it

RandomMuse - are you serious? MrsRickman hasn't made this worse, her 'hissy fit' as you call it, has resulted in the application being removed - along with all the status' therefore preventing further young people seeing this references and attempting to find out what it means.

tokyonambu - that post was made in May - ok so they haven't got rid of it, but it's not like they've posted it since this whole thing backfired.

RandomMuse has never posted on MN before this thread - like one or two others. They have just tracked the story here to have a dig. Ignore.

NetworkGuy - whether or not Coca Cola explicitly signed off on the exact wording of the status messages doesn't matter. They are still RESPONSIBLE for them.

RandomMuse - I suggest you read the forum a little bit more before assuming that this is a knee jerk reaction by porn fearing uptight mothers. Or you know,fuck off, it's up to you really.

Re: Franke's post - it says something that even a website that reviews porn videos gets that this is an enormous screw up for Coke.

randommuse, I just want to thank you for coming on and explaining this so clearly to us mere little women. Gosh, how did we manage without someone as clever as you? Must dash, I need to iron a ribbon to put in my hair when I welcome dh home from the office. And his freshly washed shirts won't put themselves on the line!

FFS, since when did sex ed for teenagers include scat porn? And since when did an entirely reasonable and intelligent objection to multi-national corporations inflicting scat porn on 14yos without their permission or their parents' permission equal a 'hissy fit'. You sound like a very old fashioned male chauvinist pig who hasn't moved on mentally since your kind campaigned against the sex discrimination act in the 70s.

Mrs Rickman - well done to you. What you have achieved is truly amazing!

That's all that needs to be said really

MrsRickman,
first of all I would like to congratulate you on your handling of this and express my sympathies about the fallout you have had to deal with.
I can fully understand that you are concerned about you and your family's privacy and that is, of course, paramount.
However, I think you should seriously consider the option of legal action now.
Please hear me out on this.
This story is, tragically, probably going to disappear in to the abyss. The only person this ultimately benefits is the Coca Cola Corporation. They are praying for this right now. There are 2 reasons you should consider legal action.
Primarily, for you and your daughter. Even taking in to consideration the initial trauma that you and her were subjected to, the situation has escalated. Your parenting skills are being questioned all over the internet, you are being contacted by media outlets, which I know from personal experience can be stressful, and you are being made by Coca Cola to feel insignificant - ie the corporation have not 'publicly' apologised, no press release to be heard of and doing so on mumsnet.com is not the same thing, it makes you look unimportant, which I can assure you is not the case, you will have ruffled some serious feathers at CokeHQ. All in all you and your daughter have had a pretty miserable few days and Coca Cola are responsible for that.

Secondly, unfortunately the major media outlets are far more likely to sit up and pay attention if the story turns into 'mum threatens Coca Cola with legal action'. I know this might seem inconceivable to some, as the porn story seems far more serious, but media and business rate the cash currency higher than anything else.
I would not like you to enter into a situation you felt uncomfortable with, and I can see that you have now taken a back seat in this discussion. Maybe you are satisfied with the outcome, that is your concern only and should be respected, however, if you are still dissatisfied with you and your daughter's treatment I would seriously advise you to consider the legal route.
I can guarantee that at this precise moment, Coca Cola will be taking steps to deal with this eventuality.
It's worth thinking about.

I give up on reading the whole thread. Well done MrsRickman on braving this. I vaguely suspect the Dr Pepper brand might benefit from the outrage in terms of its appeal to its demographic, but that, and the response on this thread, was possibly the intended outcome of a despicable marketing ploy.

The MrsRickman's DD story is on the national radio news here in Australia.

For those who hoped it might go away

MissAnnThropy I totally agree with all you've just said. I'm concerned that MrsRickman is barely posting on this thread now - hopefully she's busy with speaking to people who can help her push this - if that's what she wants, but of course there is the possibility that having started all this, she's now wishing it would all go away because of the backlash by a bunch of hard-of-thinking selfish idiots, and the inevitable media intrusion.

But even if MrsR herself chooses to stand back from this now and have some anonimity, (and I would completely empathise with that) we should still be pressing for as much media exposure as possible to the issue without necessarily drawing any more attention to MrsR in the hope that at the very least CocaCola will be fined by the advertising standards agency or something, and made an example of, and LMFM will lose some contracts. It will also serve as a lesson to naive people (like me ) who have perhaps slipped into rather over-relaxed ways when monitoring ther teenagers' internet activities.

Excellent post MissAnnThropy.

I've just spent ages typing an email to Woman's Hour on Radio4, then it got lost in the ether when I tried to post it.

Who's the best writer, with the most succinct yet comprehensive grasp on this? We need a pro-forma letter that we can all cut and paste and fire off (including the link to this thread) to anyone we can think of.

Any volunteers?

too disgusted for words. I'm late on this. Has Dr Pepper / Coca Cola apologised or dealt with the fact that a child was given an introduction to such sickness?

I have been doing some research on who has and who hasn't picked up on this on the net.
It would appear that overwhelmingly it has been ad blogs, marketing and PR bodies who are showing the most concern.
As much as I fully understand that there is a corporate responsibilty issue here, which is naturally going to be picked up in the commercial arena, I think it's important that the story is circulated to charities and groups concerned with women's/children's issues.
I have emailed OBJECT and Dr Linda Papadopoulo, the woman responsible for the Home Office's Review on the Sexualisation of young people and Barnardo's. The latter I feel would be very interested in Facebook's responsibilty in all of this, as they are strong advocators of CEOP.

Seapig - Sexually explicit content is already against the facebook T&C's.

That may well be the case but a trawl of content on FB revealed numerous 'adult' interest groups, some with pornographic images and links to adult sites. There is also a Scat Porn interest group.....

Report them.

TheCoalitionNeedsYou

Yes I will. I guess i just thought that FB had a lenient policy of this sort of stuff.

I have just emailed the BBC news website. Haven't had any acknowledgement to my DM email yesterday - can only hope they are beavering away behind the scenes, and too busy to acknowledge me (I'm only the humble messenger after all.)

FN - story went to BBC but I understand it was rejected, possibly because Coca Cola cancelled the promotion. Not sure.
Am not a journalist - just have friends there.

Yes the marketing news will focus on the ad agency. Losing a big account is a huge deal.

The line that annoys me most from Coke is ' we will ensure this won't happen again'. Fat lot of good that is to Mrs R.

Also annoyed by 'Dr Pepper is no stranger to flirting with controversy.' Almost makes it a bit of light-hearted fun, bleurgh. And what is Coke's situation wrt the illegality of all this? Any lawyer-type people have a view?