Day 299 - 13 Nov 96 - Page 30
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
2
3 MS. STEEL: On day 41, page 27, line 27, Mr. Hawkes said,
4 "Between the ages of two to seven we use advertising to
5 entertain the children. The advertising itself shows to
6 them an enjoyment about the characters' relationship with
7 McDonald's, it makes them feel that McDonald's is a fun,
8 colourful place to be, that they would like to go."
9
10 Again, on page 29, line 40, he said, "With advertisements
11 to two to eight year-olds we are trying to appeal to that
12 age group that these characters, and therefore by
13 implication McDonald's, is a fun place they would wish to
14 visit."
15
16 On day 42, page 20, line 42, Mr. Hawkes said, "Over the
17 years we have done one or two pieces of research which have
18 led to an understanding of what children find appealing in
19 advertising. In that area, it is very much one of
20 generally appealing to the fun and excitement and colourful
21 simple story-line type of approach to children. This is
22 one reason why the company uses Ronald and the other
23 characters. It is his personality. They all have
24 different personalities and characters that children can
25 relate to." Clearly the purpose of that is to make the
26 children want to join in the fun and go to McDonald's and,
27 if they do not do so, they are going to feel left out. So
28 that is a direct example of deliberately trying to do
29 that. They have done research to find out what is
30 appealing to children and then they have chosen to use that
31 method.
32
33 I think it was you made the point -- I don't know how
34 important this point is -- that of the advertisements that
35 we were shown, that were disclosed to the court, of the
36 children's ads showing ronald mcdonald featured in some way
37 or form in all of them apart from the one called 'Face' and
38 another one called 'McRobots'. Day 41, line 20, line
39 page 20.
40
41 On day 41, page 32, line 38, Mr. Hawkes said that Ronald
42 has been around in the UK since the company started here,
43 that he is still a useful sales tool, a strong marketing
44 tool, and that for that reason it was McDonald's intention
45 to go on using him on television and for personal
46 appearances.
47
48 On day 41, page 54, line 22, Mr. Hawkes said that Ronald
49 McDonald stands for the fun, the colour, the magic, the
50 spokesperson to children that McDonald's represents. He is
51 a magical clown who has a good sense of humour and just
52 represents the good fun experience of McDonald's. He said
53 that the idea behind using characters which are food
54 products at McDonald's, i.e. the Fry Guys and various other
55 characters, was to associate the two things, that the
56 purpose was to encourage the association by the child and
57 therefore the child would want to visit McDonald's.
58
59 There was a reference on day 42, page 62, line 34, to a
60 quote about Ronald from the operations manual which said
