Madeleine McCann: Cressida Dick discusses case in 2021

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On Mother’s Day at the end of March, the Otley Burger Company posted on their social media channels an advert depicting Madeleine and her mother, Kate McCann. The graphic also used another image of Madeleine being held by a man in black clothing while he runs off into the distance.

In a joke that the Advertising Standards Agency described as “distressing”, the company wrote: “With burgers this good, you’ll leave your kids at home.

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

To further exacerbate the offence, the burger joint added: “Happy Mother’s Day to all the mums out there”.

Madeleine went missing when she was three years old, while her family were on holiday in the Algarve in 2007.

She and her siblings had been left asleep in the couple’s ground-floor apartment on May 3 that year, while the parents were eating dinner at a nearby restaurant.

Maddie’s parents checked in on the children throughout the evening, until mother Kate McCann discovered Madeleine was missing at around 10pm.

Her disappearance sparked one of the largest missing person investigations involving police forces from three different countries.

Her parents have never given up the hope of finding their daughter, despite this May marking 15 years since Maddie disappeared.

In a ruling published today (Wednesday), the ASA found that the posts by the Otley Burger Company “trivialised the circumstances surrounding Madeleine’s disappearance and made light of a distressing news story concerning reports of child abduction and serious crime.”

It added that it “considered the nature of the content to be of such a concern that we asked the relevant social media platforms to remove the content and suspend the account.”

The advert — which had been posted on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook — was likely to cause unjustified distress and “serious and widespread offence”, the ASA said.

The watchdog also laid into the company for choosing to make their “shock factor” post on Mother’s Day as “likely to have compounded the distress of those who saw the ads, and particularly for those who may have experienced the disappearance of a child.”

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In its response to the complaint, Otley Burger Company said it would not use photos of the McCanns again and had deleted the relevant posts.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said the post on Instagram had been removed for violating their user agreement, and Twitter confirmed the tweet had been deleted.

The advert is the latest blow for the McCanns, following reports in the Sun last month that the Metropolitan Police are set to wind down their investigation into her disappearance.

A source told the paper that Operation Grange would wind down in the autumn, as “there are currently no plans to take the inquiry any further”.

They added that officers had grown frustrated with the lack of progress in building a case against investigators’ prime suspect, Christian B, who was named by German prosecutors in 2020. Christian B has always denied all allegations in relation to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

The Met and the Home Office — which funds the operation — declined to comment when the claims were first published.

Otley Burger Company has form when it comes to shock marketing tactics designed to offend.

In June last year, the company was blasted for using pictures of notorious criminals including Peter Sutcliffe, Jimmy Savile and Fred West as part of a Father’s Day post.

Richard McCann (no relation), son of one of Sutcliffe’s victims, said at the time he was “gobsmacked” by how “highly inappropriate and highly insensitive” the post was.

According to YorkshireLive, last Mother’s Day the company reportedly posted a picture of Karen Matthews, who was jailed after faking her daughter’s kidnapping in 2008.

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