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!?

I'll post this again, as it seems to have been overlooked.

...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.

Jimbo, every time someone apologises to you, do you ask them to give £5 to charity?

Jimbo1531 - I think the chance of leveraging this incident to get Coke to give a % if their profits away is pretty much zero.

RandomMuse - StrawberrySam is correct, Mrs Rickman confirmed earlier in the thread that her name is not actually Mrs Rickman.

RandomMuse
The only way you could possibly be aware of my details is if you represent Coca Cola.
I have googled all my details and there is no link whatsoever to me personally on the web.
I can only assume that you said this to be threatening to me, and to tap into my earlier concerns that my family's privacy would be breached.. Alluding to the thought that my daughter may now be bullied is a classic undermining tool to use on mums.
Why would you suggest this? You don't know me,my daughter or the environment in which we live.
Please do not attempt to threaten me with the notion that you have access to my personal details.
I would also ask you not to give me parenting lessons, I am in no need of them whatsoever, thanks.

This isn't MY real name either!

Yep, my ideal outcome from all this is not a payout to Mrs R, rather I want to see Coke making a sizeable donation to a children's charity. It would not make up for their actions but it would be a small gesture in the circumstances.

Random, suggest you go back and look at your first post. Any reasonable, honest reading will show you it is hugely patronising. You accused Mrs R of having a 'hissy fit', for daring to object to a multi-national corporation exposing teenagers to extreme porn. And suggested she was at fault in some way and told her, in detail, how she SHOULD have handled it, in your opinion.

TBH I`m struggling to think of situations where random references to scatporn are ever appropriate or non offensive.

@TheCoalitionNeedsYou
For the last bloody time I just came in to offer some advice about open communication in case it wasn't offered. I couldn't read all this. All I had time to read was the OP, which stated she was angered at a company. It didn't mention anything else.

You are clearly only focusing on the negative aspects you want to. Not any of the advice she did actually end up doing, which was good of her and very responsible.

Do you realize how many parents just don't have the intestinal fortitude to talk to their kids, or don't know how, or it doesn't even cross their mind? I wasn't implying this was the OP at all! I was trying to offer advice and perhaps something people just don't think about, especially when they can let their emotions get to them. They just want someone else to take care of bad things, so they can continue to watch TV in peace and quiet.

RandomMuse - You jumped in with both feet without bothering to take the time to judge the tone and style of the forum you're posting in or to read enough of the thread to see if what you were offering was useful or welcome. So you got flamed. Anyway, you have kind of apologised so I won't bring it up again.

WurzelBoot, I would happily never receive another appology for as long as I live, if people donated £5 to charity instead. I might actually start suggesting that to people, it's a great idea.

TheCoalition, when people think like this, then yes the chance of it happening is zero. The point i was trying to make is that if everyone got together about it, like they seem to have about this, then it probably would happen. I'm sure coke would rather give away a percentage, than lose their sales for a whole country. Some profit is better than no profit, is it not? Complaining about something is a pretty selfish act, it doesn't do anything for the greater good. MrsRickman is entitled to her opinion on the video, and it's probably an opinion held by the vast majority of people. But it's certainly not her place to start telling other people that their children shouldn't know about this sort of thing. And to deny it even exists or to try to cover it up is a bad thing. Whenever you tell a child not to do something, they do it anyway. Someone earlier said it's like the forbidden fruit and they are right. What you need to be doing, is explaining to the child WHAT it is and WHY it exists and then letting them make up their own mind when they are old enough. Chances are she'd have seen the video with her friends at some point anyway.

The app required parental consent, and a list of possible messages was available on the app at all times. Might i suggest to MrsRickman a family filter that searches for keywords on websites, and not just the certificate given to the website as many of them work in that way.

Well said MrsR < claps >

Lol - is that how you reply to a perfectly reasonable message on a forum, just because you don't agree with it? Intelligence challenges, stupidity insults.

And stupid people use the term 'lol'.

Why don't you tell me which bits you don't agree with, instead of decending into nastiness.

Jimbo, your insistence on portraying this whole debacle as somehow the fault of MrsR is unbelievable.

STOP telling MrsR to do things she's already DONE, for crying out loud, and look at the morality of Coke pushing its produce on kids using hardcore porn references.

You are so keen to get us to look at the wider picture that you are missing the seeping great abscess at the heart of the issue.

COKE IS AT FAULT HERE. THEY designed the app, pushed it to children, and included inappropriate references.

Random Muse you wrote: 'So I should fuck off because I'm a parent with a different view that is often not recognized in a puritan society?'

Britain isn't puritannical in the way the US is. (you're American right?). The US is much more conservative than Britain. Lots of British parents talk openly with their children about sex. So this isn't a case of a mum going 'ah, help, my daughter's seen something refering to sex, panic, panic, panic.' I hope you realise that.

I too am fairly dismayed the press haven't leapt on this more. I would have thought it was a story which would really engage readers. So what that the campaign has been dropped? This whole thing reveals a sickening mysogyny in advertising.

tokyonambu - I addressed a query for Jimbo specifically about there supposedly being "a list".

Jimbo - please see this new thread

If there honestly was a complete list including reference to 2 girls 1 cup, I'd frankly be amazed. It's part of the reason for "challenging" the participants that they can choose different levels of embarrassment without knowing what the messages might say, hence the "You've got balls." comment on a page, implying they are "daring".

I'll have to check back, but someone suggested they did check the T+C and I'd hope they took a copy (always handy to do whatever the website is, if you are agreeing to their terms for membership / etc).

Jimbo1531 - You have a weapons grade ability to miss the fucking point.

The issue is that Coca Cola - who whatever you think about there business practices or industry ARE a trusted provider of approriate material for teenagers used inappropriate material.

Is this true or not?

The issue of how parents discuss porn with their children is a WHOLE different issue, and not one directly relevant to the issue.

If this issue makes it in to the national and a campaign to boycott Coke starts what % of the country would do so? Nestle still seem to find it worth marketing in the UK.

The app didn't ask for parental consent (I'm not sure if this is even a possible feature of facebook apps). The list of possible messages didn't include this one.

MrsRickman could you please give us a call for your side of the story? We are planning on running this piece so it would be great to hear from you. 0141 420 5201.

Alternatively you can email [email protected]

Regards

``The app required parental consent, and a list of possible messages was available on the app at all times.''

Jimbo, you just don't get it.

The Coca Cola Corporate has spent the past hundred years building up a brand value. Rightly or wrongly - and, honestly, this isn't the place for a debate about the merits of sugary drinks - they have acquired a reputation like Cadbury or Marks and Spencer of honest, decent dealing. No one has the time to perform a byte-level analysis of everything they see, and people operate on a policy of scrutinising things sufficient to the perceived risk. It is entirely reasonable in any world other than the one you inhabit for people to assume that a promotion offered by the Coca Cola Corporation is less likely to contain scat porn than an adult fetish website.

The Coca Cola Corporation need this to be true, so that people will buy their products. No one would buy a sealed bottle of brown liquid if they thought that the company had a history of hiding malpractice behind small print, and in fact Coca Cola have a large part of their website devoted to attempting to scotch such rumours (see, for example, www.thecoca-colacompany.com/contactus/myths_rumors/packaging_pork.html or www.thecoca-colacompany.com/contactus/myths_rumors/packaging_rat.html)

Now you may say that is not reasonable, and parents should in fact treat the Coca Cola corporation as just as likely to impose vomit and faeces on their customers as any other company, and that caveat emptor applies in all regards. You might be right, but I suspect that the Coca Cola Corporation would want us to think of them as a trusted brand. If Coca Cola wish to use your branding advice service, and immolate the brand they have spent the past century building up, I guess they have your contact details.