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NEWS
November
13th 2002
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McDollars in the s*** McDonalds shares plunged last week after the burgermonster announced it is closing 175 ‘restaurants’ in ten countries, with the loss of 600 jobs. The company is pulling out of three countries entirely, though it has yet to annouce which - they are said to be in the Middle East and Latin America, suggesting that part of their problem is McDollars’ bad image as a symbol of US imperialism. Falling sales worldwide and a price war in the US are also causing problems for McDogpoo, though they have not yet admitted that resistance by local residents to new outlets is a growing image and financial problem. Earlier this month a ‘restaurant’ under construction in Grenoble, France was burnt down in a suspected arson attack. Local residents had opposed the construction on the grounds of smell and traffic, and had won a court order delaying construction just the day before the fire. It’s known yet known whether McDastardly will take the hints and give up. According to company bosses, the closures are just ‘retrenchment’ and they will be continuing expansion under other brands such as Pret a Manger. While part of the burgermonster’s problem is just bad image as the archetypal US globalising, culture-gobbling brand, one of the more basic objections has always been that the ‘food’ they sell is of poor quality and low nutritional value (the game of ‘Spot the vitamin in the Happy Meal’ has never yet been won). In an apparent attempt to take on this challenge, McDirt’s French arm recently paid for a full page ‘advertorial’ (That’s one of those annoying bits in a magazine that superficially look like a real article but are actually just paid advertising. As opposed to the bits that look like real articles but are actually just unpaid advertising) in the magazine Femme Actuelle headlined ‘McDonald's - is it causing obesity in children?’ In the text, nutritionist Agnes Mignonac wrote that as long as the child took regular exercise, ate healthily and wasn't overweight, a once-a-week treat was harmless. For overweight children, she advised a hamburger rather than deep-fried Chicken McNuggets. On a purely nutritional basis, this is probably fair enough. However, McDomination’s US headquarters was outraged, and issued a statement saying: ‘This is the opinion of one consultant. We strongly disagree. The vast majority of nutrition professionals say McDonald's food can be and is part of a healthy diet based on the sound nutrition principles of balance, variety and moderation.’ But that doesn’t mean kids should eat it more than once a week. What appears to be going on here is that localised marketing is hitting back. The average French kid probably eats McDirt rather less than once a week, which makes the use of Mignonac’s comments in France a clever marketing ploy to reassure French parents that they don’t need to utterly circumscribe unhealthy rubbish from their children’s diets. However, in the US, where marketing seeks to suggest that it’s okay to gorge on reconstituted cattle remains and deep-fried chicken parts on a daily basis, as evidenced by McDollars outlets appearing in schools, Mignonac’s comments could be construed as an extremely dangerous threat to the market, especially since they appear in a company advert (as in, ‘Even the company says it’s only okay once a week, so the stuff must be REALLY unhealthy…’). Oops. The McD’oh executives must be thanking whatever mcdeity they worship that most Americans can’t read French. Sources:
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