McDonald - The Arthur Page Society

Ray Kroc, the testy founder of the mighty McDonald's empire, will be cussing in his
grave. A senior English judge has just found that the corporation which spends $2bn
(#1.3bn) a year promoting itself and advertising its products "exploits children".
Mr Justice Bell didn't mince words at the end of the epic McLibel trial: "In my
judgment", he said, "McDonald's advertising and marketing makes considerable use of
susceptible young children to bring in custom, both their own and that of their parents
who must accompany them, by pestering their parents." Ouch.
Precisely focused marketing and advertising is the core of the McDonald's empire. The
business is nothing without it. The whole $30bn (#19bn) a year enterprise depends on
building brand loyalty and attracting impressionable children, as young as two years old.
For a judge to even question the ethics of the company's relationship with little people is
bad enough; to spend weeks listening to the best arguments of its top US executives, and
the defence given by some of Britain's leading marketing people, and then to reject them
and conclude that it is frequently exploitative should scare the daylights out of the
industry. This was not a judgment on one isolated campaign but on a great plank of
McDonald's day-to-day business.
It's a miserable judgment for the corporation that spends #55m promoting itself in Britain
each year. What happens now to McDonald's fabled code of conduct? Did not David
Green, senior vice-president of marketing, spend four days in the witness box and say
that McDonald's had this code precisely to prevent the exploitation of children? Has not
the company always painted itself as ethical and socially responsible? Is it time for
Ronald to change his message? McDonald's has said it will have an internal inquiry, but
it's hard to see what can be done. It could sit tight and hope the fuss will go away and,
indeed, it is not bound to change because nothing it does in this area is illegal. But if it
wants to avoid being branded cynical by an increasingly ethically-aware public, it has a
duty to respond fully and clear its name.
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