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McDonald’s Set New Targets Of Domination

Squall 13, Summer 1996, pg. 11.

The annual review of McDonald’s UK, published at the end of the last financial year, announced the burger giant’s intention to double their expansion plans.

With pre-tax profits rising by a massive 53 per cent last year, the Corporation intends to add another 100 burger bars to its current 650 UK outlets by the end of 1996. The annual review states McDonald’s intention to complete its previous ten-year expansion programme within five years. By the end of the millennium the Corporation say they will be the one of largest employers in Britain.

Meanwhile the McDonald’s Corporation US has also released an annual report containing a chapter entitled “Strategies for World Dominance”, an overt admission of their intentions. At present the Corporation operates 18,000 burger bars in 89 countries spanning six continents.

Meanwhile, the Corporation have recently signed a ten-year exclusive deal to co-promote their fast-food products with all new Walt Disney films. As David Green, Senior VicePresident of the McDonald’s Marketing, said during crosss examination in the McLibel trial: “[Children] are virgin ground as far as marketing is concerned”.

The Corporation are also official sponsors of the 1996 Olympics. Their adverts show an athlete jumping hurdles, overlaid with the words: “The best athletes all hunger for the same thing: McDonald’s.” And all this, despite an internal company memo disclosed during the McLibel trial saying: “McDonald’s should attempt to deflect the basic negative thrust of our critics. We can’t really address or defend nutrition. We don’t sell nutrition and people don’t come to McDonald’s for nutrition.”

As well as paying for an advertising billboard behind every premier division goal mouth, McDonald’s have also bought their way in as the “Official Restaurant of the 1996 European Championships” to be held in the UK this summer.