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!?

But RandomMuse, it's fairly clear that MrsRickman has discussed this with her daughter. She's said her daughter was "mortified when I explained to her (as I had to) what it was [...] she wouldn?t want her male FB friends from school seeing something like [the status update] for fear of the backlash. One of the first things she said to me was ?oh my god, mum, I hope no one from school saw that?."

You seem to be assuming that MrsRickman went off on some big media campaign without actually engaging with her own daughter, and that is incredibly patronising. It's clear from everything she's said that she first dealt with the fallout within her own family and then decided to tackle the wider question of "should multinational companies be sending hardcore scat fetish references to children?". The contest didn't get pulled until several days after she'd drawn it to their attention, and only after the Twitter storm broke.

We appreciate that you would have ignored the wider social implications and just kept it in-family, but you say that trying to put pressure on Coca-Cola to realise what a huge mistake this was was a "hissy fit". Do you really think that you weren't being patronising? Not even a little bit? Do you really think that you weren't implying that MrsRickman was overreacting? Not even a little bit? Not even when you told her that she should say she over-reacted?

I agree Substandard. As soon as people feel an element of Mary Whitehouse censorship creeping in, they shut down and stop reading, possibly assuming it's just a bunch of puritical, hysterical women getting their knickers in a twist, and they don't bother to read the full facts and think about the full implications.

Also think there may be a bit of an anti-MN backlash in the media. MN has 'clout' and has become known for having the power to change things, and that may make certain people jealous. After all, the media like to tell us little people what to think and do - not the other way around! Maybe someone doesn't want to see us getting our own way too often.

No, Random, you should be dismissed because you are patronising ("hissy fit" indeed) and have got the wrong end of the stick. This is not about sex ed. It's about a multi-national corporation pushing hardcore porn to teenagers.

Anyone else find this a bit sinister?

RandomMuse:
"A quick amount of Googling led me to find both mom and daughter's name, address, phone number, and Facebook pages, among other things."

We are aware it is possible to find people via Google. To show off you have done it makes you look sad, stalkerish and a leeetle bit threatening. Not the look you were going for, I presume.

No edam, it's about people taking responsibility for their own parenting and paying attention to what their children are doing.

Yes, I was a bit as well. Just because it's quite possibly inevitable that teenagers will at some point search for/explore unusual sexual practices, does that mean we needn't bother with any sort of protection for minors at all? Let's just desensitise them all to everything from the outset shall we? Including depraved violence?

RandomMuse
Are you from Coca Cola by any chance?

No, Jimbo, it's about a multi-national corporation pushing hardcore porn to teenagers.

People should also take responsibility for their own parenting and pay attention to what their children are doing. Which is why the OP here noticed the status update within an hour, got it taken down, had filters on the computer so that her daughter didn't get anywhere with her search, and discussed it with her daughter.

But multi-national corporations, just like anyone else, shouldn't target hardcore porn references at children. I had thought that that was a reasonably non-controversial proposition.

I hope that The Sun picks this up and runs with it. For the love of God let some media outlet report this vile promotion by Coke for the corrupt and inappropriate filth that it is. I cannot believe that a multinational corp posts a pornographic reference on the Facebook page of an underage child and no major news provider is prepared to go for the jugular and cover them in the humiliation, condemnation and shame that they deserve. The overwhelming majority of responsible adults are sickened by what Coke did in the name of promotion and financial gain.

I will buy the Sun ( for the first time in my life!) if this makes the front page.

Jimbo1531 - Which is what Mrs Rickman was doing.

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

Facebook doesn't have a lenient policy on this. Thousands of groups are made a DAY & they rely heavily on members bring offensive material to their attention, as they cannot check everything every day!

This is why every action you can do on FB has a report or 'flag' option.

Report, report, report!

Yes I am from The Scottish Sun and we are interested in your story. Please get in touch with the number I posted earlier. Thanks.

This thread is being allowed to run then, is it?

Am disgusted by what I have read so far, including the latest link from Fresh Business and hope that something more major happens to really stop this sort of stuff happening again - it's completely inappropriate and wrong on so many levels.

Jimbo - that's exactly waht MrsR was doing! how many more times can we say it?!

But what about all the others who are still blissfully unaware? do they deserve to have their children's minds defiled like this? Just beacuse they didn't do enough reading over the shoulder?

If FB had been a website for over 18's I still think many people would have been rather offended by this, but knowingly allowing it to happen on FB is indefensible.

Dr Pepper is a brand that is targeted at teens - not adults.

Time to split this into two threads. One strictly concerning Coca-Cola / Dr Pepper and a separate one for all the other issues on porn / censorship / feminist concerns / anything else!

There is another thread on porn/feminism but it broke down a bit...

it's about people taking responsibility for their own parenting and paying attention to what their children are doing.

Jimbo, how are you not getting that that's exactly what MrsRickman did?

While she's not peering over the shoulder of a 14yo every second, she is monitoring her facebook page, has set her ISP to restrict inappropriate material and was able to spot the problem within an hour of it happening.

Your argument that the child shouldn't have been allowed to take part in a promotion by Dr.Pepper is frankly odd. Why would anyone assume that this would contain a reference to scat-porn? Her daughter wasn't asking to join in something from Nuts or Maxim or anything else that is clearly marketed at adults.

MrsRickman dealt with the problem by complaining to Coca-cola and they agreed it should have never been out there and it was closed down. She hasn't done anything even remotely wrong. I don't know why you're acting like she has.

@ProfessorLaytonIsMyLoveSlave I appreciate you bringing that too my attention. I am glad that they had a talk and there was a mutual understanding.

That was what I was "trying" to recommend. I apologize for not having the time to read everything here, and people seem to misunderstand my intention. I was never, repeat, never trying to criticize, patronize, insult, hissy fit, whatever have you, in regards to the OP, her family, or anyone else.

So it sounds like she did a great job. I'm happy to hear that.

@edam I had no such thing. I never said it was about sex ed. I said it was about having open communication with your children. If you think this is the last time this is going to happen, or just because this campaign is done, and there's some kind of victory because it's gone, you are sorely mistaken. It will happen again, and no amount of activism against corporations or censorship will make reality go away.

Mainly what this has done is spread the story, and thus the offending video clip to even more international attention.

@Substandard Sigh. I'm not doing anything with the information. It was just a point at how easy it can be done without any hassle.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1005321-Coke-Dr-Pepper-posts-extreme-porn-reference-on-teenagers- facebook

I googled the following comments taken direcly from Kerrymumbles:

"This could get very very dirty"

"cover your arse"

"their arses will go for a fry-up as well"

and I have to say I was shocked at the filth I was exposed to. Should this kind of thing be allowed on mumsnet?

``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.''

If that's the case, then Coke are completely responsible, as they must have seen the terms and conditions prior to signing off the campaign. It also means that it's not possible for either the agency or the client to pass this off as a minor problem by a now-terminated member of staff, as the offending phrase went all the way through the governance.

If Coca Cola want to adopt the position that if they happen to promote scat porn it's parents' fault for not reading the small print, and that they might therefore do so again, I suggest that they come out and say so. If LMFM wish to argue that parents are responsible for checking the terms and conditions of promotions they run on the off chance that they contain references to scat porn, again, I suggest they put that in their next pitch to Coke and see how it goes down with the client.

Your basic argument appears to be that both Coke and LMFM are quite entitled to use scat porn as a marketing tool so long as it's in the Ts and Cs. I'm cool with that, so long as Coke are happy to be associated with vomit and shit as a long term brand value. I have this vague suspicion that they may not want that to be the first thing that leaps to people's minds, but it's their call.

And I'm cool with it so long as LMFM make it clear to their clients (such as the Department for Education) that people reading their adverts should be prepared for scat porn unless they take precautions. I'm posted the letter to my MP this morning asking him to investigate what measures the Department for Education will be taking to ensure that Foreign Language teaching is not promoted with porn: one easy proposal would be to select an advertising agency that doesn't thing scat porn is a cool marketing tool.

RandomMuse - you came on here saying "What you've done is all wrong, what you should have done is this - in fact here is the whole script" and you don't think that is patronising?

Do you think that there's any chance MNHQ would use tokyonambu's "I'm cool with that, so long as Coke are happy to be associated with vomit and shit as a long term brand value. I have this vague suspicion that they may not want that to be the first thing that leaps to people's minds, but it's their call." as the Quote Of The Week, if I ask them nicely?