McDonald - The Arthur Page Society

announced that it will collaborate on research and education initiatives with the Scripps
Research Institute to fight childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes. 133
Questions for Discussion:
• What additional public relations tactics and strategies might McDonald’s initiate
to increase openness and trust with external publics?
• If McDonald’s actively promotes and advertises active, healthy lifestyles, can that
compensate for perceptions of McDonald’s as providing unhealthy foods?
• Is it a corporate responsibility to provide an entirely healthy menu, or is it a matter
of consumer responsibility to consume less healthy foods in moderation?
4. Suing for libel can backfire and do more harm than the original libelous material.
It can also cause a local issue to become widely publicized.
In issues management, once an issue has been identified and prioritized, there are
a number of possible ways of responding that range from acquiescence to confrontation.
In the case of the Greenpeace activists hand-distributing the phamplet, “What’s Wrong
with McDonald’s?” McDonald’s chose the harshest of all response strategies by taking
legal action against the activists. McDonald’s attempted to silence their criticisms
through legal means, but the court case only served to draw media attention to those
criticisms. In addition, the case became a classic David-and-Goliath struggle with
McDonald’s looking like a corporate bully attacking defenseless, ordinary people.
Representing themselves against the mega-corporation for three long years as the court
case continued on, Steel and Morris became folk heroes, while McDonald’s looked like a
powerhouse of global domination. The media picked up this tale of “the little guy”
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