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!?

"This whole thing reveals a sickening mysogyny in advertising."

Yes, the general tone of the response has been "Calm down dear! It's only a commercial!"

Completely missing the point about a company's moral responsibility to interact with child consumers in an appropriate way.

It's not about being puritanical or wanting sex off the net. I am not, and I don't. It's a completely separate issue about corporate responsibility when dealing with minors.

And the normalisation of extreme porn (to the extent that it's argued away as not that extreme and not a big issue for a child to see and something that should just be accepted as part of our culture) and the pornification of women is one of the issues that affect millions of people on the planet, Jimbo. They are called women and you may have heard of them.

Caring about the pornification of women doesn't preclude also caring about starvation or drinking water, oddly enough. How about every time you mention the failing school system or western consumerism or starvation someone points out patronisingly that there are real issues out there like the lack of drinking water?

A critical message lacking in empathy is still a reasonable message. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it should just be cast aside. That's exactly the sort of closed-minded opinion i'd expect from someone with such strong feminist views.

The point is Jimbo.
You don't know me.
You don't know my daughter.
You don't know what sort of relationship we have.
You don't know what my political leanings are.
You don't know how this has affected our family.
You have banged on and on and on, I can tell you're enjoying this. It's lame.
I suggest you go on the net and find a forum who agrees with you, you can chat about it all day long, maybe make some friends. No matter how long you prattle on, no one agrees with you here. This isn't twentysomethingboynet.com, it's mumsnet.
Seriously Jimbo, a wee nugget like you on a website really is the smallest fish I have to fry today. I'm amazed you find 'fuck off' nasty, yet appear to be unphazed by the ingestion of excrement. Wow.

There have been a lot of misunderstandings. I apologize the community.

Please, don't say I threatened you. Threatening you would be posting your information, or saying I'm going to do something to you.

Basically I can't win. I post your personal info, and I'm a jerk, but that's the only way I can prove it. I'm not going to be a jerk. I really don't care if you believe me.

Posting on the internet leaves trails forever. You could even find out my real name and address if you cared. There's simply no way around it. The only way to remain private in this day and age is to not use the internet.

i 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.

Well that's not very well thought through is it?

So all insults and wrong doings could be bought off with £5. Could I donate £15 in advance and tell you what I really think of you?

Surely the better aim is encouraging people to improve their behaviour so that there are fewer slights and insults and people referencing scat porn to children than basically allowing a free for all as long as you're wealthy enough to cover your vileness bill.

Not to mention that giving to charity becomes something naughty people have to do - a nice moral upstanding person would never do something like that.

Seriously; are you actually attempting to achieve something here, or are you just here because antagonising a complete stranger who is already upset about something is fun for you?

I felt the Status Takeover promotion was spot on with its audience, showing an understanding of their humour, creating a highly sharable promotion, and demonstrating genuine ingenuity in a saturated market.

The WHOPPING fail was the reference to the film. Especially when their audience are teens. Very silly.

Simply pulling the campaign looks weak on behalf of Coke though. They should have the guts to explain and remedy in public.

Can?t they utilise the publicity and make use of the status take-0ver app to issue a PR resolve and in their own way say sorry and make amends?

I've written a proper response on my site:

www.GrahamCreative.me

Where's the challenge in posting to a forum where everyone agrees with me? I don't particularly like having my ego stroked by posting to a forum where everyone tells me yes, you were right, well done you. I don't need the praise and acceptance of other people to feel good about myself.

In the Press today

Lean Mean Fighting Machine could lose Coke after Dr Pepper Facebook fiasco

MrsRickman - Have you heard any more from the company?

No. A critical message lacking in empathy may be a reasonable message, or it may not. Its reasonableness and its degree of empathy are completely independent variables.

You do sometimes seem to be assuming here that the less empathy you display the more reasonableness and logical force you must therefore be displaying.

Most posters here have concluded both that you are displaying a great lack of empathy (which reflects on you as a person) and that your arguments lack logical persuasive power (which reflects on your argument and conclusions).

"Could I donate £15 in advance and tell you what I really think of you?"

You know what, if you show me the reciept and can prove you donated £15 to charity, you can publicly kick me in the arse.

Food industry news has picked up on the story.

Hope someone at MNHQ is monitoring so this thread doesn't just collapse in a heap!

Might be that keeping it in one thread is being done deliberately, but yesterday seemed a lot of tangential argument going on, implying poor parenting. Would much prefer to see no finger pointing from some 20-somethings suggesting "porn everywhere, so get over it" and missing some of the primary concerns altogether!

"Posting on the internet leaves trails forever. You could even find out my real name and address if you cared. There's simply no way around it."

It's perfectly possible unless your adversary is a major intelligence agency with a real time need to track you, and this sort of sneery "oh, I could find you if I wanted" stuff is, as several people have pointed out, a way in which the technologically naive are bullied.

For a start off, if you simply sign up for an email account with hotmail, then use that to open an account with (for example) mumsnet, the only thing linking you to the postings you make is an IP number.

Linking an IP number with an individual is a lot harder than you imply, and although you can produce scenarios where it's easy, there are equally scenarios where it's hard. Whatever, it almost always requires the co-operation of the user's ISP, and for a UK ISP to reveal that information without a warrant is illegal.

GrahamCreative,I read your post earlier.It sickened me. You honestly think I care about Lean Mean Fighting Machine saving their contract? Really?
I liked the bit about 'this leaves us all with a big problem'. Who exactly? I see no mention of people's kids or parents themselves.
You hope this 'blows over' and LMFM come back with a great campaign. Good for you, I really wouldn't bank on it.
I am glad I don't have priorities like you.

Jimbo1531 - What is the point you are trying to make? That the internet should not be censored because of kneejerk think of the children moralising?

If so that's a perfectly valid point of view. Many on here would agree with you. Porn is an important issue.

But it's not relevant to the issue of Coke promoting it to minors. If you want to address those issues, start a thread in Politice/Feminism/AIBU - and try to actually respond to points that are raised.

Right, who's going to set up the 'Kick Jimbo up the arse' JustGiving page?

Round of applause for Dittany and "I bet it's killing people that one woman has stopped Coke in its tracks and probably ruined the business of the horrible agency that came up with this idea. Women aren't supposed to be able to do that. We're supposed to put up and shut up, and if some women have to eat shit literally for men to watch and enjoy and share with their mates (wot a laff) well we should just keep quiet. It's not going to happen."

And for MrsR of course.

And why is this thread still open at 1061 posts?

Oops was already in The Guardian last Weekend

"Posting on the internet leaves trails forever. You could even find out my real name and address if you cared. There's simply no way around it. The only way to remain private in this day and age is to not use the internet."

Well, that's not true to begin with. I can go to an Internet cafe, pay cash for Internet time (so no link to my real name or address), register for a free email account using a false name and address, use that email address to register for various Internet forums and/or Facebook, and post away happily with no link anywhere to my real name and address.

I haven't done that, as it happens (although I have an email account in a false name which I use with a false address for some purposes where I have to give a contact email but am twitchy about sharing my own information), but it would be trivially easy to do. It's really only once you start wanting to send money over the Internet that you have to start having any link between your real and online identities.

Go The Sun. I hope that you are going to condemn Coke's actions and that you will also focus on the fact that participants to the competition had to make their profiles public (thus potentially leaving childrens' facebook profiles open to internet predators).

Interesting commentary from someone (presumably) in the sector:

grahamcreative.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/drpepperporn/