Day 045 - 03 Nov 94 - Page 23

     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  The suggestion is there was no such survey,
     3        is it, Mr. Morris?
     4
     5   MS. STEEL:  Yes.
     6
     7   MR. MORRIS:  The suggestion is that McDonald's have been asked
     8        about this survey.  If we go to the document -- this is
     9        "Big Mac, The Unauthorised Story of McDonald's".  It is
    10        next to John Love.  I am going to read out some bits of
    11        that document.
    12
    13   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  For what basis with this witness?  He said he
    14        has heard these things said, but he has not seen the
    15        survey, which may leave it up in the air as to whether the
    16        survey exists or not.  What is the point of putting an
    17        extract from the book about it?
    18
    19   MR. MORRIS:  (To the witness)  You have never seen the survey,
    20        you have said?
         A.  No, I have not.
    22
    23   Q.   So do you not feel that your department should check its
    24        facts before it starts putting about something that may not
    25        be true?
    26        A.  Again, it is not an expression that I use.  I have
    27        heard other people use it and I believe that something
    28        exists, obviously, if someone is going to make that kind of
    29        statement.  But I have not seen the survey.
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What sort of age children are we talking
    32        about?  Because any survey which purported to show that a
    33        child who understood English had not heard of
    34        Father Christmas, I would think was fundamentally flawed --
    35        even one per cent; and if the survey suggested that less
    36        than 96 per cent of children who were intelligent enough to
    37        answer had heard of Father Christmas, I think I would be
    38        inclined to bin the survey, myself.
    39
    40   MR. MORRIS:  On page 100 of that book, I will read that
         paragraph:  "A few years later Cooper and Golin" -- this
    42        would have been in the 70s, and Cooper and Golin were the
    43        advertising agency?
    44        A.  I believe they were the public relations agency.
    45
    46   MR. MORRIS:   ".....announced with even greater fanfare that 96
    47        percent of American children were able to identify Ronald
    48        McDonald.  This made the company clown a close second to
    49        Santa" -- I am sorry about that -- "according to Cooper and
    50        Golin.  The data was attributed to a 'ronald mcdonald 
    51        Awareness Study'.  Again the item made news across the 
    52        country. 
    53
    54        "But characteristically, nobody at C. and G. to this day
    55        knows who did the study."
    56
    57        Now, I have spoken to the author of this book, and----
    58
    59   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Can we take it step by step first of all.  So
    60        in fact -- I am rather relieved to hear -- more than