Day 299 - 13 Nov 96 - Page 16
1 realisation of the character and positioning we have in the
2 advertising. The bit I was mentioning is from the toy food
3 section of the fact sheet.
4
5 Miss Juliet Gellatley, the former director of Youth
6 Education and Campaigns of the Vegetarian Society, when she
7 was in that position she gave talks to about 30,000
8 children of all ages in around 500 classroom debates and
9 also talks to thousands of adults as well on vegetarianism
10 related issues.
11
12 She related how, following some of the talks, the children
13 would discuss changing their diets and that on many
14 occasions, of those people who were interested in going
15 vegetarian, some felt that they could not because they
16 would be the odd one out or be laughed at if they could not
17 go to McDonald's. That is obviously relevant to the point
18 about being the odd one out and whether or not you are
19 viewed as -- well, the normality trap.
20
21 She said that sometimes they indicated that this was
22 because of the hype and that they would talk about the
23 advertisements that they had seen and that McDonald's had
24 been the only burger chain that had been specifically
25 mentioned and she had been surprised about that and about
26 the fact that it had come up so often.
27
28 She stated that McDonald's claim that they do not exploit
29 children because "children are never encouraged to ask
30 their parents to bring them to McDonald's" was farcical and
31 that clearly the main purpose of advertising aimed at two
32 to eight year olds was precisely to encourage children to
33 ask their parents to take them to McDonald's; otherwise,
34 what would be the point in advertising directly to such
35 young children.
36
37 I think, actually, in the end, the Plaintiffs' own
38 witnesses admitted that that was -- or they withdrew from
39 that position, that children were not encouraged to ask
40 their parents to bring them to McDonald's. Obviously, they
41 realised just what a ridiculous position it was to take.
42
43 She related how the children kept mentioning Ronald
44 McDonald and it was obvious that they looked up to him as
45 just a pure and positive fun character and something that
46 was quite real to them. She said that the younger children
47 seemed to think it did not matter how much of McDonald's
48 products they ate, it was healthy and good, because Ronald
49 told them that. And on top of the children referring to
50 getting their parents to take them to McDonald's, Miss
51 Gellatley also said that many of the adults have referred
52 to that.
53
54 Obviously, Miss Gellatley had a great deal of experience in
55 this field and expertise and she said that there probably
56 wasn't anybody else who had given so many talks to school
57 children on that subject as she had and had that kind of
58 experience of children's perceptions from McDonald's
59 advertising and McDonald's effects in general.
60
