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!?

My point is this: how many of you feed your children with food packed with e-numbers and colouring and flavouring and preservatives, most of them artificial, many of them carcinogenic, without knowing what exactly they are or how they will affect your child? The same thing has happened with the dr pepper app. MrsRickman didn't read the ingredients, and then complained when the 'cancer' of scat porn appeared. I do agree that children shouldn't be exposed to things like that at the age of 14, and then not without guidance when they are old enough to know about it. But all the information was there, on the app, to be read by any who wanted to.

Jimbo do stop using silly analogies.

This is nothing like feeding your children e-numbers or watching them die of obesity or whatever other unrelated issue you want to dredge up.

Clearly you've run out of arguments to address the real issue here, if you have to start dragging in totally unrelated debates.

"many of them carcinogenic"

Which ones are these Jimbo?

That Graham link is a bit rubbish (and I will gloss over the fact he can't spell lose) as a general interest article: it is positioning the ad company as the unfortunate victim in this scenario, which is hardly the point.

May we just ignore Jimbo now? His idiocy speaks for itself really.

all the information was there, on the app

No it wasn't. The app showed examples and oddly, none of the examples shown referenced porn.

So again, your analogy isn't right. It's like a foodstuff marketed for children, saying "contains 100% natural ingredients" then not showing all the ingredients, and finding out later than one of the natural ingredients was used uranium.

There's also a whole heap of issues with your risk assessment of packaged food, but this thread isn't about that.

It's not totally unrelated. You ought to know what your child is consuming, and then make decisions based on what you have researched. All the information was there. Also, I think you'll find the majority of the people using the app were over 18. And out of 160,000 people using it, only one complained. There were about 100 different possible messages in the list. That means that 1600 people had the message at some point, and not one of them thought it was a major problem.

But you don't think anyone should complain about the fact that the scat porn reference was seen as an appropriate message to send to children, because if consumers were more aware they'd have seen it for themselves (although isn't what you're actually saying with the "list of possible messages" thing that the children at whom this application was aimed could read the comment without even having to install the application? I'm not sure that's hugely better...).

So presumably no one should complain about artificial colours and flavours and sweeteners and preservatives in food, either, because if consumers were more aware they'd know about them for themselves?

In fact, we should all just kick back in an everyone-for-himself and if you don't watch out for your own back you deserve what's coming to you kind of way?

Except this would presumably be an everyone-for-himself culture where (somehow, and I do rather lose the thread of how these two attitudes are going to spontaneously co-evolve) we still all care deeply about starvation, a lack of drinking water, and any other issues that you think are important?

"many of them carcinogenic"

This list contains information about some of the most dangerous. So, to answer your question, those ones.

"In fact, we should all just kick back in an everyone-for-himself and if you don't watch out for your own back you deserve what's coming to you kind of way?"

Half the time everyone complains about the 'nanny state' we live in, and the other half of the time they're complaining something bad happened to them because no one told them it might.

"And out of 160,000 people using it, only one complained. There were about 100 different possible messages in the list. That means that 1600 people had the message at some point, and not one of them thought it was a major problem."

No it doesn't.

Firstly there were three levels of embarrassment, and it's reasonable to assume this was in the highest. You don't know what proportion of the users signed up to that, any more than you know "the majority of the people using the app were over 18".

Secondly, just as fruit machines do not generate jackpots with the same probability as other states, you have no way to know (unless you have access to the source of the application) whether the messages were generated with equal probability or with particular ones more or less likely.

Thirdly, the only person claiming that there was a list visible to people looking at the Ts and Cs is you, and you've presented no evidence for it. It would seem on face value somewhat inimical to a competition about "what's the worst that could happen?" to provide a list of everything that could happen, and I think the onus is on you to stand up your claim.

Jimbo seems to be arguing that corporation are evil for misleading and damaging their customers and that consumers are entirely responsible for any damage done to them as they should have researched it better.

Who's that cogitive dissonance working out for you Jimbo?

Our feelings are clearly being picked up somewhere...

www.wavemetrix.com/content/coca-cola-response-fails-avert-social-media-crisis

Also the informed consent presumes that the person consenting knows what the line refers to.

Since even some of the execs at Cocacola apparently didn't know what the film was, how could they expect the children using it, and the parents of those kids, to be any better informed?

Yet the person who designed the line DID know what the reference meant, knew exactly.

Jimbo honey, come clean now, you're the work experience boy at the ad agency, right?

sdia12 - perhaps MrsR has an appointment today, or making the most of some good weather (tipping down here!) to be out shopping with her daughter.

Just hope you see Lauren Branston's post around 1500-1600 Sunday as Cokespokesperson explaining Coca-Cola's actions, and a later post by MrsR on Monday between 1600 and 1700.

Clearly the status message was unsuitable.

Concerns that have been expressed on MN have included:

1. requirement for Facebook users to drop privacy settings to minimum

(teenagers were primary target, as reported by Brand Republic in the "What's the worst that could happen?" campaign)

2. although Terms and Conditions for the competition said "Those entering who are aged between 14 and 16 will require parental consent", there was nothing to confirm it had been provided. Presumably any teen in that age group, winning 1,000 pounds, would break the news to parents with "but you must say you gave me permission to enter this competition"

3. the status messages included references to masturbation, and this particular message as posted by MrsR when opening this thread.

As you will see from some of the "to and fro" in the last 24 hours, there are some regular users of MN who deplore any pornography, others who are a bit more liberal, but consider the named video clip so extreme as not to be acceptable, a few (male?) posters who have seen the video and seem to consider it part of what is just "out there" and appear not to be shocked, saying there are worse items online.

It's true, from some Sex Education series on Channel 4, that teenagers (presumably mostly boys) have shared this video clip from mobile to mobile (I was shocked when two lads under 16 described it to the presenter, who then showed it to parents - whose reaction was predictable - upset and shock) - so youngsters worldwide might well start considering "average" sexual relations to be very tame, but that's a society problem, and parents still need to do what they can to limit the exposure to any form of pornography while giving adequate information for teenagers to know what is safe and how to prevent pregnancy, STIs etc.

So Jimbo you KNOW that none of the people on this thread check food ingredients for those additives do you?

You don't know much about Mumsnet if you think that.

Right. Two "possibly carcinogenic" and one "may combine with other substances to form nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic".

(also, to be fair, one "may be combining formaldehyde and ammonia. Formaldehyde is considered carcinogenic" -- is it combining formaldehyde and ammonia or not, and if it is is it doing it in a way that makes formaldehyde's carcinigenic qualities relevant? And one "may be carcinogenic if mixed with formaldehyde" (with no rational suggestion put forward that anyone's likely to be doing that. And as they've previously implied that anything mixed with formaldehyde may be carcinogenic, because formaldehyde is carcinogenic, it's a strange claim))

So three possibly carcinogenic additives, perhaps five at the outside if stretching a point and giving huge benefit of the doubt. That sort of definition of "many".

"This list contains information about some of the most dangerous."

"Exposure to carbon dioxide over long periods of time can be dangerous. Experimental evidence shows that carbon dioxide exposure might significantly reduce fertility"

Jesus, I'd better stop breathing out.

sdia12 - from a personal point of view, if I was in a position to "investigate" and write a story for publication, I'd love to know whether Lean Mean Fighting Machine had some student(s) working on this project: their Creative Partner, interviewed in Dubai and available on YouTube, says they do use students, and elsewhere in the interview one or other partner says {when asked about the recession} that there may be some who "limit creativity" and implies this agency likes to push the boundaries, so with some of their other work, like Chatroulette Cheerleader, it is clear they like to push the envelope, and in Dr Pepper / Coca-Cola they seem to have found a "willing partner" - though Marketing Week reports their future is under consideration by Coca-Cola, clearly pointing a finger at the agency.

"Ok, here goes."

Oh no.

"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."

Mkay.

"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'."

Horrified? That's not so very horrifying, you seem to not be able to grasp the basic humor found among people who aren't of your generation. In which case, who are you to impose otherwise, this is what goes on nowadays, sure you may not like it, but trying to change it will only cause you to seem a bit (to put it mildly) neurotic.

"For anyone who doesn't know what this means, please stay ignorant,"

People who follow this philosophy are what's keeping the world behind in it's progression, do you really enjoy ignorance? To not be able to know the ups and downs of the world? Why is it you want to keep your child from understanding the bad parts of the world, rather than having to experience it at an old age and be shocked, like you are. You're appalled by the though of scat porn, while many far younger than you or I aren't even phased by it. And that is by no means a bad thing, there's tolerance now, why would you want someone to feel appalled toward something that isn't all that appalling. What you, my friend, are doing is exaggerating on a ridiculous level and you really ought to stop ):<

"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!!"

Again, you're not protecting anyone, you're hurting your child. You think someone seeing something considered "graphic" in nature is actually going to cause them mental trauma? No, maybe a bit of nausea if they're weak stomached, maybe they'll just find it gross, but goodness they won't find it scary or "horrifying" as you do.

"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."

Oh, that's such a shame. ):

"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 tell you exactly what to do is stop fizzing, stop being disgusted, and get over it. I agree, they should not have actually said that on your daughter's profile, but you really ought to relax, it's truly not that big of a deal.

Also, for all of you who are saying "Call the police!" Get the hell over yourselves, it's a few words that hurt no body "I watched 2 Girls 1 Cup and now I'm hungry" yeah, that's definitely worth a police report. Truly, if I were a cop and I got that report, I would have so much trouble keeping a straight face while listening to you get enraged over this. So please, children, relax. You blew this far out of proportion, you annoyed Coca-Cola, now let us move on to more important issues! :D

Oxygen is HIGHLY corrosive as well - better stop breathing in.

Hi MrsR - had not seen your post when I responded to pleas from sdia12 for you to phone him/her.