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!?

Seapig - they are hands off rather than lenient. If you report something they should take action. Porn is explicitly against the T&C's - but it's not meant to be a totally child safe site.

Jimbo (if you're still here), the examples given when asking the children involved to click "accept" were things like "I wet the bed". So it's rather more like your calling out to a 14 year old girl and asking her to come over to you to talk about something mildly embarassing, and then when she comes over you start talking to her about scat porn. And if you are really a 24 year old man then you'd be quite likely to find that there were follow-up consequences to that. Why is it different for a multinational corporation? Especially for an evil multinational corporation, which is what you see Coca-Cola as?

This was a promotion specifically aimed at children. Nowhere in the T&C that they or their parents had to sign up to were references to scat fetish porn mentioned.

Many of us, alongside issues such as global climate change and exploitation of workers in developing countries, see the growing pornification of cultural representations of women as a big issue. We are concerned about it in general, in our own right as women, for our children. Many of us have experienced its repercussions. I understand that you don't see it as a problem, and that you therefore think that we should be worrying about "bigger issues" (i.e. the issues that you are worried about, which seem to be by definition "bigger"). I find that sad, and I'd be disappointed if my own son grew up to be so completely blind to gender issues as a genuine concern, but you are clearly happy in your own set of assumptions and beliefs so fair enough.

I though, particularly concerned at the idea that you can tell (not sure how -- through some psychic ability, perhaps?) that the women in this film "are certainly not being forced into anything". Countless men have sex with trafficked women prostitutes every day and would probably say that the women were "certainly not being forced into anything" even though they are morally (I accept probably not legally, given the narrow legal definition) participating in rape. Porn "pioneers" such as Linda Lovelace have explained the abusive background to the making of films such as Deep Throat (I'm sure plenty of people have seen that and concluded that she was "certainly not being forced into anything"). I accept that many women in the sex film industry are there voluntarily, but there are also many who at best would rather be doing almost anything else but find themselves caught up in a vicious circle where there seems to be only one thing they are qualified to do and a fair few who are the victims of overt abuse. I'm staggered that anyone (except perhaps Tim Roth's character in Lie To Me or his real life equivalent) considers that he or she can immediately tell the difference.

Well they cancelled the promotion quite rightly but that still doesn't make it non-story, does it?

I'd say the fact that MrsR managed to stop a massive advertising campaign makes it a bigger story.

FN - not saying I agree with them, just saying what I heard!

MrsRickman, can you please give me a call to discuss this? Think I can help you here, cheers.

0141 420 5201

It's imperative that we discuss and explore, (in the biggest possible public arena) the wider ramifications this promotion may have had on thousands of impressionable children had MrsR not intercepted it. Just because it has stopped now, doesn't make everything alright.

If we let this fizzle out Coca Cola will just go 'Phew - that was a close one, eh guys? Least said soonest mended. Right then, what can we do to get at the kids next?'

Hi sdia12, that would be the Scottish Sun then??

Yes this is a huge story with so many contemporary issues I am gobsmacked there isn't a writer willing to take it all on tbh.

sdia12 Journo or lawyer? Even if she doesn't come back to you, and I couldn't blame her really, please do something. You have enough to go on here, surely?

FN, it's definitely not over yet - especially if (as has already been mentioned earlier) significant numbers of the 160,000 participants overlook the need to reset their privacy settings.

ProfessorLayton, well said.

How do you know? Did you ring the number?! Doesn't really matter though, surely. In a way, we need a more sensationalist approach -look where the Guardian got us. Can't afford to be sniffy!

I'm just adding my outrage to the thread.
haven't managed to read it all (the 1st couple of pages and the last couple)

I found this though, on google.

sorry if it's already been posted.

it's from Fresh business thinking website and it was posted yesterday.

@tortoiseonthehalfshell I was not being patronizing. I did my best to be rational and intelligent to offer as clear and unbiased an angle for whatever the situation may bring, since I don't know exactly how she has handle the situation up this point. I wasn't implying she was a bad parent, or over-reacting. I was trying to offer calm, cool, and collected advice.

A quick amount of Googling led me to find both mom and daughter's name, address, phone number, and Facebook pages, among other things. Kids these days are tech savvy, and not stupid. They can find out this stuff just as easily. All this attention for you will surely make it to her friends. She could risk bullying as school now for her mom being square. It is simply the way I felt best to deal with it, was quietly, in the home, not anything else.

I also fail to see what nationality has to do with trying to offer support to a fellow parent.

@NormaStanleyFletcher Our society changes so fast today that what isn't acceptable to older people is to younger generations. It's already a popular internet meme. This is not to dumb down anything and say, "Scat porn for all! It's perfectly fine!" It's more to say that kids these days are exposed to a lot more. I am no expert, and don't have any knowledge on the possible emotional damage, if any a young teen may have viewing such.

There is simply the possibility it may not affect a person. It's just a video, it can't harm anyone physically. How anyone will react is unknown. Some people just don't care, some do. Some people want to throw up, some people sadistically laugh.

Perhaps that fear of the unknown is the hugest driving factor. What if? What if she views it? Then what will happen? Well, she'll probably be disgusted, that's why you let her know via communication before hand why you were concerned and didn't want her to see it. To simply say it is an impossibility that a person may react in a neutral way before, is ignorant, because you can't know until after it happens.

By keeping something off limits and just saying no, without an explanation always ends badly. It becomes forbidden fruit, and they will want to see it.

@ZacgartQuack Please don't take what I said out of context. I clearly stated that dealing wish issues of sexuality includes talking about things she may not want to have to, including material of an extreme nature. I'm sure describing it alone would put anyone off.

ProfessorLayton, thanks for your reply, which didn't contain too much sarcasm, and no downright insults like some of the other posts. Some of my previous posts were a bit offensive, and for that I appologise, but I feel strongly about this sort of thing and wanted to get my argument across effectively.

The fact is, things like 2girls1cup do exist, and while I don't believe they should be pushed at underage teenagers, I do think they shouldn't be brushed under the carpet. It's not a pleasant thing to watch, I agree, but it's effects are temporary. Millions of people all over the planet have seen the video, and as yet we don't seem to have a scat porn epidemic. My argument is simple; if people took all that time and effort they put into complaining, and actually went out and did something, then the world might, MIGHT, change. There are issues that affect millions of people on the planet, like starvation and a lack of clean drinking water, that make MrsRickman's daughter seeing someone eating some shit slightly insignificant. Maybe we should be using this situation to our advantage, and telling coca cola we'll keep buying your products if you put a percentage of your profits into funding projects in poorer communities around the world, because hey we all like to drink coke sometimes. The only reason MrsRickman would have for sueing coca cola is for personal gain, and I think that seems slightly selfish given the opportunity we might have here.

Helping to get this thread to 1k posts I hate Facebook (i love drinking coke though, sorry)

I should be ignore because I have an opinion?

I should fuck off because I'm a parent with a different view that is often not recognized in a puritan society?

I'm patronizing because I tried to cover all bases of unbiased and levelheadedness as I do with my children?

We are all trying to do our bests as parents. I'm sorry I don't have to time to read all the posts here. And I'm sorry I tried to offer a different and valid solution.

Yes, I agree BeerTricks. It sort of implies that MrsR is angling for them to pay her fares to London, throw in a night in a hotel, and then she'll go away quietly! Missing the point really.

Can understand it is no longer a running story so there is no 'campaign' to get behind and get a result for MrsRickman because she has already done it herself, but why isn't it being used as a springboard for stories on internet safety? Are other media outets fed up with Mumsnet for some reason?

Am still v disappointed with the Guardian, hoped they would look at the story again.

Yesterday it was the most viewed story on the Guardian website (presumably the business or media section) and on the Metro. Clearly the readers are interested why aren't the media? And they wonder why the traditional press are losing their audience to websites. Just too slow to respond to a story that HAS captured the public's imagagination.

Can I also point out, that there was a list of possible messages in the terms and conditions of the application, and had MrsRickman spent some time looking at it, she would have seen the message about the scat porn video.