Day 299 - 13 Nov 96 - Page 24


     
     1        television could be £3,000 for 30 seconds.  He agreed at
     2        line 51 that you can purchase considerably more times of
     3        showing a children's advertisement for the same amount of
     4        money you would have to spend on one adult advertisement.
     5        He said that it would be a waste of money to show it a lot
     6        of times to children, but that does not seem to be borne
     7        out by all the evidence in the day about the virtual
     8        continual bombardment of advertisements towards children
     9        from McDonald's.  On average...  Well, for virtually all of
    10        the years we have got from 1988, 1989, it is mostly around
    11        40 to 45 weeks of advertising every year to children.
    12
    13        With those figures for the cost of an advert during
    14        Coronation Street or during children's television time, and
    15        taking figures which were given in the total media
    16        expenditure chart, for example 1989, it works out about 14
    17        million pounds on adult advertising, which, if you divide
    18        it by 30,000, you would get 466 advertisements for that
    19        amount of money whilst the four million which is listed on
    20        the total media expenditure chart for advertising to
    21        children in 1989, if you divided that by £3,000 you would
    22        get 1,333 adverts to children.  So that is nearly three
    23        times as many advertisements to children as adults based on
    24        the figures in McDonald's media expenditure chart.  Even if
    25        the advertisements were only five times cheaper than for
    26        adults, you would still get one and a half times as many
    27        advertisements being directed to children than were being
    28        directed to adults.
    29
    30        Obviously, on top of that you have got to take into
    31        consideration the fact that, as Mr. Hawkes admitted, most
    32        of the so-called adult advertisements feature children and
    33        would also appeal to children anyway, or would affect or
    34        would have an effect on children.  Just that particular
    35        point came up on day 41, page 26, line 13.  I think it was
    36        you asked that you noticed that considerable use was made
    37        of children in the adult advertisements, and Mr. Hawkes
    38        said that that was true and he said that the purpose was
    39        the reflection of a typical day and a typical week across
    40        McDonald's, and obviously that would be something that
    41        would appeal to children that were watching as well.  In
    42        fact, in our view, it is almost certainly the case that the
    43        advertisements were designed in that way, especially seeing
    44        as they were going to be shown in cross-over time when the
    45        company is well aware that children would be watching.
    46
    47        For example, there was the advertisement with the child's
    48        first day at school, and then being taken for a treat.
    49        Obviously, that is something that would appeal to the
    50        child.  I think it is just completely ludicrous for
    51        McDonald's to try and assert that that would not be
    52        something that was aimed at children.  It may be aimed at
    53        adults as well, but it is certainly aimed at children.
    54
    55        Can I just make a point, as well, about the total media
    56        expenditure figures?  I think they are behind Mr. Hawkes'
    57        statement, total media expenditure, 1986 to 1982.  We would
    58        given these the day that Mr. Hawkes went into the witness
    59        box, which was in October 1994, and I just noticed
    60        yesterday that the fax date on them is April 1994, and that

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