Day 299 - 13 Nov 96 - Page 10
1 Well, it seems that the sort of four main strands of
2 questions that come out of the section of the leaflet, one
3 is 'do McDonald's target children?' Sorry, the first is,
4 'do McDonald's target children', and we would say that it
5 is more or less irrelevant what proportion of McDonald's
6 advertising is aimed at children, although in our view the
7 statement in the leaflet was certainly true for the 1980s
8 and the majority of their advertising and promotional
9 activity was aimed at children. I will come back to that.
10 But the point is that if that statement is deemed to be
11 defamatory, it is not because McDonald's aim more of their
12 advertising at children than at adults but that they target
13 children in a large way, or they direct a substantial
14 amount of advertising towards children. I mean -----
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I understand that point.
17
18 MS. STEEL: Right. Okay. It is clear from all the evidence we
19 have heard that they do aim a substantial amount of
20 advertising at children.
21
22 Just another point on that is, firstly, that the leaflet
23 does not say that nearly all McDonald's advertising is
24 aimed solely at children, just that nearly all of it is
25 aimed at children, and I think you might remember that
26 Mr. Hawkes did say that a large proportion of the
27 advertisements aimed at adults -- that he said were aimed
28 at adults -- featured children and would appeal to
29 children. In terms of the perception of the general
30 public, I think that most ordinary members of the public
31 would consider such an advertisement to be aimed at
32 children as well as being aimed at adults, and therefore to
33 increase the proportion of advertisements which are aimed
34 at children. (Pause)
35
36 I mean, we think that the issue of what amount was spent on
37 which type of adverts is basically a red herring because,
38 apart from anything else, it is very fortunate for
39 McDonald's that advertising during children's television is
40 a lot cheaper than advertising during adults' television.
41
42 The second question in relation to what we are looking at
43 is: do the advertisements which McDonald's use encourage
44 children to think that eating at McDonald's is part of
45 everyday life or that... I cannot remember the phrase you
46 used -- but if they do not go there they will not fit in
47 with the crowd or they will be left out, whatever. They
48 will feel left out.
49
50 MR. JUSTICE BELL: The odd one out. Yes, I see.
51
52 MS. STEEL: Yes, thank you. That can apply not just to whether
53 or not the advertisements are part of... When I say
54 'everyday life', that does not mean that you have got to
55 go there every day, just that you know it is something that
56 everybody else is doing, like having a party there or, you
57 know, going there for a treat or whatever, it is something
58 that everybody else is doing and you do not want to feel
59 left out.
60
