Interesting article by Samantha Landy in today’s Herald Sun. It basically covers the opening week of which McDonald’s claim success. But you can claim whatever you like when you make up numbers to suit your perception of reality. This is not the first time McDonald’s PR flak Skye Oxenham has resorted to these types of untruths, remember her original claim that “although a small minority are against the project in Tecoma, the vast majority support it”…..well that one dissipated as soon as the community undertook a real survey and proved that 9 out of 10 were actually saying no.

The numbers Skye has dreamt up today will again be destroyed by actual facts let’s consider some of her “numbers”

4000 on opening day ???
A lot of the community who opposed the building of the store spent most of Monday 7th outside the store. For most of the day Police and protesters outnumbered actual customers the exception being around 10:00 – 11:30 when a crowd magically appeared complete with vouchers. At best this crowd may of been 100 – 150 and was timed only for the media. Our community knows what 4000 looks like as we had numbers like that at marches in both March and July last year. Such a crowd filled the Primary school car park and blocked traffic on Burwood Highway. There was no such crowd on Monday the 7th Skye.

And speaking of vouchers, Skye denied vouchers were given out and then goes on to say only a handful to those who couldn’t line up. Yet last Saturday store franchisee James Currie admitted on 3MDR community radio that vouchers were given out. Obviously someone is not telling the truth here and our bet it’s Skye. And even if Skye was telling the truth why do you give vouchers to people who didn’t line up? It makes no sense. Mark Twain once said “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything” that’s fortunate for Skye being responsible for PR for this disaster.

The next number is a doozy. 20,000 customers for the week.
OK Skye, let’s pretend to be delusional for a minute and accept that number, given that it was open around 15 hours a day during the week and 24 hours on Friday and Saturday that works out to 2.7 customers every minute of every opening hour. We observed times during the day where one of two customers were in store and nothing through the drive through……so sorry Skye, this number is looking shaky…….but we’ll stick with it for another minute. Let’s assume 20,000 customer did make purchases and we’ll also assume that the average profit on the transaction was $1.50. That’s around $30,000 profit for their busiest week and it doesn’t even come close to paying for the security on the site. So back to reality……it didn’t happen Skye.

However, Skye did redeem herself in one small quote claiming “People absolutely voted with their feet”, yes, she got that right…..they stayed away in droves and continue to do so.

All of this corporate spin doesn’t bode well for the Tecoma folly and Skye and the Sydney management team should maybe reflect on the words of author Dorothy Allison:

“Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.”