When I was in 9^th grade – quite a while ago now, I will admit – we did an activity breaking down the cost of a McDonald's hamburger to McDonald's. The actual ingredients of the hamburger represented a small fraction of the price they were charging for it (about 10%), and nearly 50% of the cost of the hamburger was going to pay for advertisements. I do not know if these figures remain accurate today, but I can only assume given the amount of advertisements you see that they are at least close. Now, I understand advertisements that present a new product, since if you do not let people know, they won't come and buy it, but does McDonald's really need to run ads just to let people know they're there? Who is watching TV and thinking “McDonalds, you know I had forgotten about them.” You can't drive 10 miles down any highway in America without passing at least one of these places along the way. They can't really be informing people about McDonalds for the first time, either. Are there really people who watch a McDonald's commercial on TV and say “Wow, that place sounds groovy. Honey, we should go check it out!” I contend that there are not.

Anyway, now McDonald's is in competition with a number of other “fast food” places who also advertise heavily. It's become such an ingrained part of our culture that I think they do not need to spend so much money on it. They're even running out of ideas. They have a commecial line depicting people going to McDonald's to get food to serve at a party. If anyone does this to you, I believe you are under moral obligation to this world to get a gun and shoot them in the head.

My point is I think they could easily increase business more by running a final advertising campaign saying that they will be stopping all ads except for occasional ones to show new products, and slashing their prices on food by 50%. Most people don't seem to have a strong opinion about McDonald's vs. Burger King, but if one cost you half as much as the other, I bet you would see a serious increase in their number of customers.