McDonald's forced to remove image of boat from advertising campaign by its owners

With its distinctive colour scheme and elegant masts, the boat resting on the scenic sandflats of the west Cumbrian coast made a beautiful shot for a television advert. But the promotion was made for the fast food giant McDonald's, and the owners of the Badger, a 34ft junk-rigged sailing dory moored near their home, were less than happy at their boat being used to promote a restaurant they "have never set foot inside and are not likely to". Now, in a remarkable victory, the retired couple from Cumbria have won their fight to have the advert removed from TV screens and re-edited – minus the boat – at the company's expense.



"We didn't see the advert ourselves at first, but lots of people kept saying to us: 'Oh, we saw the Badger on the McDonald's advert.' It was quite irritating, especially as we are not fond of fast food and the Badger has a beautiful galley where we cook everything from scratch. We even make our own bread," said Gloria Parsons, 63, who owns the boat with her husband Alan, 72. "Then one night we were watching something and the advert was on every break, right across about two hours of the programme. Lots of people were very excited to see the Badger on screen, but we weren't. She is very precious and very special to us, and we felt upset that this large corporation would just ride roughshod over our feelings. It wouldn't be acceptable to go into someone's garden and just take a shot of their house, so why use the Badger?

"It is our efforts and time and hard work that have made her look as good as she does and we didn't want all that to be used to advertise their product; it didn't seem fair." The couple got no response from the company's advertising agency. It wasn't until a radio station contacted McDonald's on their behalf that the firm agreed to withdraw the "weather advert" – an award-winning short film shot in Derbyshire and Cumbria that claims to show that the fast food chain uses produce from British farms. Alan and Gloria Parsons have owned the Badger since 1999 and have sailed across the Atlantic twice in it. "She is bright yellow and green and so quite distinctive on the television. It was clearly the Badger."



A spokesman for McDonald's said: "We apologise for any offence caused and for any delay in responding to the Parsons. The Parsons wrote to our advertising agency about their concerns and as soon as we were made aware of this we instructed them to remove the boat from the advert. The advert is no longer on air and the re-edited version, without the boat, will be back on air in December." The couple said they would be taking legal advice about whether or not McDonald's might be due to compensate them. "We're not into compensation culture, but we don't expect our hard work to be used to sell someone else's products," said Mrs Parsons.