Day 041 - 28 Oct 94 - Page 27

     
     1        too much of the relationship between the characters and the
     2        food and selling the food.  You will only see that the
     3        smaller items -- you will only see the items that children
     4        are likely to purchase or the parents are likely to
     5        purchase for the children.
     6
     7   Q.   Can I ask you, Mr. Hawkes -- again this is not just related
     8        to McDonald's, though obviously McDonald's is at the centre
     9        of it so far as this case is concerned -- do you have a
    10        view as a professional advertiser, market man, about what
    11        effect advertising has on children -- well, I would like to
    12        split them up, if I may, at different ages?
    13        A.  Yes.
    14
    15   Q.   Are there recognised age groups so far as advertisements
    16        are concerned?
    17        A.  So far as we are concerned, we really are looking
    18        between the ages of two to about seven for the appeal of
    19        that advertising you saw.  That is quite actually a wide
    20        age band; children develop pretty quickly during that
         time.  We use the advertising to entertain them.  It is
    22        clear that the biggest factor actually on child behaviour
    23        is their peers and what happens in the family.
    24
    25        But the advertising itself shows to them an enjoyment
    26        about, in this case the characters, the relationship with
    27        McDonald's.  It makes them feel that McDonald's is a fun,
    28        colourful place to be that they would like to go to.
    29
    30   Q.   Do you know whether or not it is generally accepted that
    31        children of, let us say, less than five or six understand
    32        that an advertisement is trying to sell something?
    33        A.  Yes. I have read in my time a fair amount of work that
    34        suggests that very early on, down to the age of three in
    35        some cases, children are aware that these are trying to
    36        sell something, if you like.
    37
    38   Q.   Yes.  I am going to ask you to look at another document and
    39        ask you to put it in the file.  Your Lordship has this --
    40        it is the one I handed up this morning -- Mr. Hawkes has
         not.  (Handed)  I suggest you put this, which is a document
    42        headed "McDonald's Total Media Expenditure 1986 to 1992" --
    43        it has a big capital A on it -- behind those other
    44        documents to which I referred you this morning.
    45
    46        If you could also put in the Children's History Take list
    47        as well.  That is perhaps a convenient place for it to go.
    48        Now this document, Mr. Hawkes, we find the percentages in
    49        the right-hand column, I think they were cited in the
    50        statement which you wrote for these proceedings.  This 
    51        document gives us the actual figures in money, does it not 
    52         ---- 
    53        A.  Yes.
    54
    55   Q.   -- for both adult and children's advertising?  We see that
    56        the proportion, the percentage of the advertising budget
    57        which is spent on children or children's advertising
    58        declines not quite in a straight line because there is a
    59        blip at 1991, but more or less in a straight line from 1986
    60        to 1992?