A viral-marketing gambit gone terribly wrong | Hacker News Reader

A viral-marketing gambit gone terribly wrong

thebigmoney.com

20 pointsgrellas14 comments

Most of the media writeups on this strangely avoid describing it (the linked article points out more details), which makes the controversy baffling if you only read those articles.

For example, one story (http://www.pamil-visions.net/coca-cola-pulls-facebook-campai...) makes it sound like it was no more than a mildly suggestive ad campaign, and gives examples of "the infamous embarrassing statuses" including "Never heard of it described as cute before.", which make it sound pretty tame, as if a bunch of sensitive moralists were offended by a mildly raunchy ad campaign. No mention of, say, the 2-girls-1-cup reference.

Here's the link to the lady who started it: http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/child_internet_safety/1003998-Ne...

While I do agree they probably shouldn't have had that done, the response of the moms in the forum is pretty funny as some of them want to have facebook shut down and get the cops involved.

Also, how do they not realize that their 14 year old installed the program of their own will?

That thread is incredibly scary. I get tired of this "for the children" mantra that's used to justify every last pissy tirade of every self-righteous parent on the face of the Earth. If the mother actually cared, she'd have not turned her kid loose on the Internet in the first place (what, you mean random strangers won't raise my kid for me?). Also, let's just ignore the fact that the kid is 14 years old.

apparently even someone saying they watched porn is offensive. I guess that's true if you think all children should be sheltered from all knowledge of anything they're not allowed to do until they reach the magical age when they are then allowed to know and do all.

Of course, that doesn't prevent them from watching sitcom reruns where sexual activity is constantly alluded to. At least here they must stay up til 6:30 pm to be exposed to it.

2 girls 1 cup is some of the most horrific scat on the net. Have you seen it? It's probably illegal in most countries.

I really don't understand what could make it illegal above-and-beyond regular pornography. Sure, it's disgusting, but a lot of things are disgusting.

Shouldn't breast feeding in public also be illegal then? How many kids could potentially see that?

... it's not the most horrific scat on the net. Not even close[1]. Also, fun fact: they used chocolate for most of it.

[1] See the Encyclopedia Dramatica article on Shock Sites, if you must. Or the Pain Series, if you're feeling really brave and aren't about to eat.

Such is the internet. In its raw uncensored format it can be informative, funny, sad, gross, disgusting, erotic and probably dozens more emotions I cant think of right at the moment. Sure Coke screwed up, and the ad company are obviously idiots to even think of associating with with a food brand, but seriously when are parents going to realise that if a child has access to the internet, at some stage they are going to be exposed to something of an unpleasant nature. 2 girls 1 cup, while pretty disgusting, is only on the inner edge of gross when it comes to the net, so the parents need to be aware that they are probably lucky that the weird and misguided intentions of the ad agency didn't dig deeper into the hideous, sickening bowels of what can be found on the internet.

True enough. When I was a kid there was rotten.com, and I never felt threatened by it (unlike, say, stilemedia, which I immediately considered culturally fetid).

The great thing about the internet is that you are in control, and so there's nothing much to fear from nasty pictures - you can always just close the page if you decide you aren't interested. 2girls1cup is a relatively long video, and all the people I know have only watched it for as long as they needed to decide they didn't want to see the rest.

Of course, this has lead to shock values, but I haven't seen many bad examples you couldn't anticipate - maybe just if you're really unlucky on your first visit to /b/, or something.

Who knows, in the end the uberhyped old spice campaign might have lost them customers, whereas the despised Dr Pepper campaign might bring a huge boost of sales.

I have absolutely no data to base this on, but I would expect that for both brands the net effect on sales will be positive because these campaigns have raised brand awareness. In this advertising filled world standing out amongst the flood of stimuli is more important than anything.

What is pivotal in the buying decision of the mentioned mom bloggers is more likely if their husband or child asks for the product (in this case Dr. Pepper). Not if they are angry about one of their marketing campaigns.

Not that again:

http://mohrslaws.blogspot.com/2010/07/this-is-why-nobody-tak...

So, the big mention in here is something about "two girls one cup" and how offensive it supposedly is. I keep asking myself, how gross can it be? I decided I didn't care for it but then curiosity got me. I went to wikipedia to read the description of that video and it is BAD. Really bad. Gross indeed. I can understand why parents got so upset about this. I had not idea about this video and yet it is a famous brand promoting this, even if indirectly. I guess the people that came up with this thought that everybody was already familiar with this video. Not everybody is a fan of Howard Stern. (I did watch some of his shows years ago and found them highly disturbing. Mind you, I was still in my early twenties back then so I'm not that old).

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