Fast food chain McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD) has apologised for an advert in the UK highlighting a child’s bereavement that has caused a storm of social media criticism.
The ad showed a boy struggling to identify things he had in common with his dead father and concluding it was just eating a filet-o-fish meal at McDonald’s.
Twitter posts slammed the advert as insensitive and exploitative, though the fast food chain said the aim was to highlight the role it has played in the lives of customers.
The new McDonald's TV ad campaign is absurd: "the only thing you had in common with your dad was your love of Filet-O-Fish".
— Stanley Wang (@stanleywanguk) 16 May 2017
"We apologise for any upset this advert has caused - this was by no means an intention of ours," a spokesman told the BBC.
McDonald’s apology comes just a month after PepsiCo pulled an advert that featured super model Kendall Jenner in a protest march handing a can of the drink to a policeman as a peace offering.
That ad was slammed as it coincided with a wave of protests against new US President Donald Trump, racism and US police brutality.