Lean Mean Fighting Machine under threat after Dr Pepper porn uproar

Coca-Cola is considering dropping Lean Mean Fighting Machine, the agency behind the disastrous Facebook campaign for Dr Pepper.

Dr Pepper
Dr Pepper

The company has been attacked by parent’s groups after its promotional Facebook campaign hijacked a 14-year-old girl’s status updates and made reference to a pornographic movie.

A Coca-Cola spokesperson says it has “’launched an investigation and will be reviewing our relationship with the agency”. Lean Mean Fighting Machine was only appointed to the account in April.

The offending status update pretended the young girl had watched a notorious scatalogical movie on YouTube called ’2 Girls 1 Cup’. The message read ’I watched 2 girls one cup and felt hungry afterwards’. The girl’s mother, Mrs Rickman, says her daughter searched for the movie after reading the status update, but was fortunately blocked by the child filter.

The spokesperson continues: “It has been brought to our attention that the Dr Pepper promotion on Facebook posted an offensive status update. We apologise for any offence caused. As soon as we became aware of this we took immediate action and removed the status update from the application. We have also taken the decision to end the promotion. We were unaware of the meaning of this line when the promotion was approved and have launched an investigation into why it was included. We take full responsibility and will be reviewing our promotional procedures. We will take all steps necessary to ensure this does not happen again”.

The opt-in Facebook campaign was playing off the ’Dr Pepper, what’s the worst that could happen?’ strapline. It encouraged Dr Pepper fans to sign up to an application that allowed their status box to be taken over by Coca-Cola. The app would then post embarassing or humourous messages as part of the campaign.

Other examples of the embarassing statuses included: “Lost my special blankie. How will I go sleepies?” and “What’s wrong with peeing in the shower?”. Facebook users who took part in the promotional campaign were entered into a weekly prize draw, with the chance of winning £1000. Over 160,000 signed up to the campaign and the cancelling of the competition has resulted in a flood of complaints.

This story first appeared on pitch