Day 042 - 31 Oct 94 - Page 12
1 A. No, it is not. It is -- how do you mean by "a play"?
2
3 Q. Put it the other way round: "McDonald's rely on
4 chemicals." That is the kind of thing where people might
5 say: "Oh, McDonald's food has a lot of chemicals in it."
6 "It's true" -- you are saying it is true. Now, I accept
7 that you are not saying it is true that there are a lot of
8 chemicals in the food in this advertisement, but the idea
9 of it is to make a joke out of the thing?
10 A. It takes a popular misconception, yes.
11
12 Q. Because if people know a lot about the fact that McDonald's
13 is clean, or you think people are aware that McDonald's is
14 clean, there is no particular great need to advertise that
15 fact to them any more, is there?
16 A. Well, other than this was very much to the -- all of
17 these ads in the series were very much to demonstrate the
18 lengths we go to in certain areas to ensure that our
19 standards are kept; and the "clean" part of this story does
20 that, as well.
21
22 Q. If we go over to the right-hand column, after, "We are
23 confident that you won't see anything you would rather not
24 see" -- which, presumably, is another reference to
25 cleaning -- it says: "We are equally confident that you
26 won't eat anything you would rather not eat." What is that
27 referring to?
28 A. The same thing: this popular misconception that there
29 are things in our food. For instance, people believe that
30 our beef is not a hundred per cent beef; it is that popular
31 misconception, because it is.
32
33 Q. This relates to chemicals, in particular, here -- chemical
34 additives?
35 A. As it goes on, yes.
36
37 Q. "For, though chemicals play an important part in our
38 kitchens, they have a very small part in our food." You
39 talk about the hamburgers and scrambled eggs.
40
41 "There is fresh milk in our milkshakes and real
42 strawberry juice in the strawberry syrup. True, we add a
43 little stabiliser to keep their consistency consistent.
44 And we clean our lettuce (Iceberg lettuce, by the way) with
45 chlorine, before we wash it. But when you eat at
46 McDonald's, you are eating little more than the best raw
47 ingredients, freshly cooked in spotlessly clean kitchens.
48 And that is plain, unadulterated fact."
49
50 The purpose of this advertisement is, is it not, to
51 say that -- I think you said that there is not many
52 chemicals in McDonald's food?
53 A. Yes. The quote, itself, plays a very small part in our
54 food compared to other things.
55
56 Q. The reason that the Advertising Standards Authority ruled
57 against you is because they found that that was not true?
58 A. The reason is that, in their estimation, we did not go
59 in -- I believe this was their ruling -- we did not go into
60 enough detail to balance the thing. I think we gave -- the
