Measures for future promotions: McDonald's

We thank Mr Leng Kok Meng ("Stop such unhealthy promotions"; June 29), Mr Tan Beng Keong ("Repeat of 2000 - McDonald's should have known better"; Forum Online, June 29) and Miss Chua Chern Nee ("Fruitless trip to McDonald's"; Forum Online, June 29) and all our customers for their feedback on the recently concluded Hello Kitty Fairy Tales promotion.

While the first Hello Kitty Wedding plush toys in 2000 caused quite a stir, consumer response to subsequent promotions has been a lot more moderate, and last year's McDonaldland Hello Kitty series was generally well received.

We worked hard to give fans more of what they wanted with this year's Fairy Tale designs, and we also significantly increased the quantity of Kitties available.

However, demand for the new designs still surpassed our expectations. For the Singing Bone Hello Kitty, we drafted extra staff to help manage the queues and engaged road marshals to help direct traffic at our Drive-Thrus.

We also set a limit of four Kitties per customer and implemented a system of queue tickets (coupons) in our stores.

These tickets were given out to customers waiting in line and allowed us to gauge when supply would run out so we could inform later customers not to join the queue.

We have learnt a great deal from this campaign and, while we currently have no plans for another Hello Kitty promotion, I would like to share some measures we will put in place to ensure any future promotions go smoothly.

First, we will impose limits on the number of Hello Kitties each customer can buy per transaction - to discourage resellers and ensure there is more supply for everyone.

Second, we will revisit our promotional start times so that there will no longer be a need for late-night queues.

Third, we will work hard to alleviate the problem of scarcity and ensure that we minimise disruptions to other services such as McDelivery and Drive-Thru.

We would like to apologise to anyone who has been inconvenienced as a result of this campaign and thank our customers for their understanding and support.

Kevin Lim

Senior Communications Manager

McDonald's Restaurants