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

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