Complaints Add Up Against McDonalds Ad Total

Fast food chain McDonalds has successfully defended itself against a flurry of complaints to the ASA about advertising for its 99p “McChoice Menu”. A total of 153 objections were received regarding ads that claimed that there were 40,312 possible combinations available. Complainants did not believe that this number was realistic.

The advertisers said that since there are eight different items on the McChoice for “mix and match”, a factorial of eight was used to give all possible permutations of combining the eight items. This gave 40,320, from which eight was subtracted because the advertisers believed that single items should not be included as “combinations”. In fact, the advertisers pointed out, with the different flavours available for some items, the actual number of items was 16, giving over 65,000 different combinations. They added that they were not suggesting that customers should try to buy every combination, but that it was aiming to highlight the variety of choice.

The authority noted that the advertisers had wrongly stated the number of possible combinations, but nevertheless considered that, as the menu actually offered more combinations than stated, that the ad was not misleading.

ASA: 020 7580 5555 www.asa.org.uk

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