Day 043 - 01 Nov 94 - Page 63
1 A. Yes.
2
3 Q. As we can see, that letter itself indicates that McDonald's
4 had gone to outside persons for advice about the content of
5 the proposed advertisements?
6 A. Yes, I think we tried to take overall meticulous care
7 in the development of this campaign to ensure that lots of
8 people were talked with.
9
10 Q. I was going to ask you whether you could remember what sort
11 of outside advice -- I am not asking you what the advice
12 was -- who you asked about the validity of the
13 advertisements?
14 A. I know that we had people that were nutritionists, we
15 had people that were doctors, physicians, we had people
16 that had worked in the public health sector. Then we had
17 experts not only inside the company but at the advertising
18 agency and consultants that we worked with as well.
19
20 Q. Mr. Horwitz told us, I think, that Leo Burnett themselves
21 have a specialist legal department; is that right?
22 A. Yes, they do.
23
24 Q. Can you remember whether you personally had any concerns
25 about whether the advertisements might be open to criticism
26 for any reason at all at the time when they were being
27 prepared?
28 A. I was concerned that they would not be open to
29 criticism, and that is one of the reasons why we took this
30 kind of care as we possibly could in developing the ads.
31
32 Q. Was there any sense in which a decision was taken to sail
33 as close to the wind (if that is an American expression) as
34 you could?
35 A. I am not sure what you mean.
36
37 Q. Get as close to the line as you could in point of ----
38 A. No, we wanted to be well above the line. We did not
39 want to sail close at all.
40
41 Q. In a campaign of this kind, does McDonald's have any
42 interest in getting close to the line or, indeed, across
43 it?
44 A. No, not at all. It would be not in our best interests
45 -- in fact, I think it would be quite debilitating.
46
47 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do you normally take such wide consultation
48 before an advertising series?
49 A. If it is an issue that may be in question that we may
50 do that, but this probably was the one that we took the
51 most counsel from that I can seem to remember in my few
52 years at McDonald's. But we do -----
53
54 Q. That is why I asked the question; what was it, if anything,
55 which you thought might be an issue or sensitive about
56 this?
57 A. Well, this was a controversial issue as well as that
58 there were, as far as I was knowledgeable at the time, some
59 guidelines and federal restrictions on how you can
60 advertise when you are talking about these kinds of issues.
