End of story for one fast food ad

Anyone seeing a picture of a potato in a fries box accompanied by the headline, 'THE STORY OF OUR FRIES. (END OF STORY)', could be forgiven for being annoyed when they strongly suspected that salt, sugar and dextrose is added.

 

That’s exactly what happened when this McDonald’s advertisement appeared in The Radio Times, The Independent, Observer Food Monthly, The Guardian Weekend Magazine and the London Evening Standard’s ES Magazine.

 

 

The newspapers where the advertisements appeared attract a group of readers after an intelligent read and who can be sceptical about fast food and keen to eat healthily. When readers saw the ads, a number of them questioned the claim by McDonald’s and wrote to the ASA.  The outcome of their complaints showed the power of individuals to have a major advertisers’ campaign withdrawn when it doesn’t live up to the rules.

 

The seven complaints received by the ASA from people across the UK, in addition to one from the Food Commission, were not bashing McDonald’s merely because it is a fast food outlet but because they were concerned about the nature of the claim. Indeed, in addition to the headline, the ad stated about the potatoes, ‘We peel them, slice them, fry them and that’s it.’ Suspecting that this over-simplified the production process of the fries, they approached the ASA as the independent arbiter of advertising.

 

Among the complainants was Mr A, who has high blood pressure and believed the ad was deceptive and had serious health implications for people like him because salt was added to the fries. Dr S added that other ingredients are used too and that the ad therefore ‘implied a misleading level of purity in the product.’ Meanwhile, the Food Commission also said salt was added to the fries.

 

Recognising the ad was in danger of breaching the CAP Code, ASA launched a formal investigation and wrote to the advertisers asking them to respond to the complaints and justify their claims.

 

The advertisers stated that the ad was never meant to be taken literally and that it merely intended to show that their fries were made from real, not reconstituted potato and to focus on the simplicity of their fries. Among their other justifications were that serving staff were trained to provide unsalted fries if required.

 

In fact, the ASA accepted some of McDonald’s statements in response to complaints from members of the public - such as the challenge by one complainant that the fries could contain gluten from other products because of cross-over in cooking oil.   The ASA was satisfied this was not the case.  The ASA concluded, however, that because the advertisement contained claims such as ‘End of story’ and ‘…and that’s it’, most people would understand that it described the complete process of how they produced the fries. Because material parts of that process were omitted from the advertisement, ASA concluded that the advertisement was misleading and told the advertisers not to repeat the approach.

 

The ASA didn’t stop there. A full adjudication was published on its website, together with high profile media coverage that included Lunchtime News on ITV1 with Nicolas Owen and newspapers such as the Mirror, Telegraph, Independent and Financial Times.

 

A growing number of food advertisers are making claims about the ‘natural’ quality of their product. Those that are not being entirely honest will continue to be policed via the ASA, with the help of members of the general public who report it.