Day 283 - 21 Oct 96 - Page 25
1 performances, but in their guidelines, code of practice, or
2 whatever, in the USA and here, on TV they talk about 'magic
3 moments', magic moments to focus on the child's most
4 vulnerable emotions - a birthday, a recent advert, I think,
5 talks about divorced parents, wanting your parents to come
6 back together again. Very emotional, manipulative
7 advertising, Ronald MacDonald reaching out to pick up a
8 child that has fallen over on the ice, you have seen that
9 advert. Purely emotional targeting of the most vulnerable
10 sections of our society, children.
11
12 So it is not as if it is an accident, it is something that
13 is completely strategically prepared and very effective, no
14 doubt about it, children as young as two or three pointing
15 at McDonald's as they go past on the bus. Every parent
16 knows that. For that reason, some countries have actually
17 banned those kind of tactics, that kind of advertising.
18
19 The other witnesses from McDonald's, from their marketing
20 and advertising departments, we believe have not only
21 conceded our position on advertising. We have heard, for
22 example, that Mr. Fairgrieve outlined a survey done by
23 McDonald's where pester power - they actually test the
24 customer service to see how effective pester power is as
25 being a reason for why they came into the store. He said
26 it was a positive -- they did not see pester power as
27 something negative about the company, something to
28 discourage, we have to change our advertising, it is making
29 children pester their parents, he described it as a
30 positive, not surprisingly, because it means their profits
31 go up.
32
33 Of course, they are quite aware that the sheer volume of
34 their advertising and promotions, now two billion dollars
35 every year worldwide, is not just children who are affected
36 by it, it is a kind of a relentless promotion of an image
37 on the population, the sheer volume of which must be a bad
38 thing, basically. Nobody ever asked for advertising
39 billboards to be put up in their High Street, or an advert
40 put up in the middle of a programme they are watching on
41 television. Unsolicited propaganda, and unresistible as
42 well in many respects.
43
44 We brought defence witnesses who backed up our position,
45 authoritative witnesses, including Susan Gibbs from the
46 National Food Alliance; Stephen Gardener, who had
47 threatened to sue McDonald's in the United States unless
48 they ceased their advertising campaign which portrayed
49 their food as nutritious, because he said it was
50 deceptive. Not just him, but the three main attorneys
51 general of the United States considered their advertising
52 deceptive.
53
54 I move on to the issue of food safety and food poisoning.
55 The leaflet states that meat is responsible for 70 percent
56 of all food poisoning incidents, chicken and minced meat
57 being the worse offenders. And McDonald's - sorry, in the
58 public domain there has been a lot of awareness recently
59 about the necessity of cooking meat products very
60 carefully, because of potential food poisoning results
