the eXile - Other Shite

Issue #14/95, July 20 - August 3, 2000

Other Shite

New McMud Slides Into Success

(AP) - MOSCOW The lines that form outside of the McDonald's restaurant in Moscow's Pushkin Square an hour before it opens for lunch say it all: Da, McMud.

"We can barely keep up with the demand," said Ray Tillis, regional East European director for McDonald's. "The McMud is bringing back crowds that we haven't seen since we first opened here a decade ago."

The McMud is the result of extensive market research and product testing conducted over the past two years in the potentially lucrative Russian market, where, despite the crisis, McDonald's continues to expand at a feverish pace. The McMud, a simple concoction consisting of tomatoes, cucumbers, mayonnaise, and sprinkling of dill, costs only 15 rubles, or just over 50 cents. All of the products are sourced locally.

"The secret is in the mayonnaise," boasted Pushkin Square McDonald's manager Vladimir Voblya. "We put a large dollop of it into the McMud."

On a recent sunny weekend afternoon, crowds of Russians could be seen eagerly devouring their McMuds on the outdoor terrace in front of McDonald's.

"Hamburgers and french fries are okay, but I really like this McMud," admitted Tanya Shishkova, a marketing manager for Bee-Line telephones and a graduate of the prestigious Plekhanov Institute. "The mayonnaise reminds me of good home cooking."

Sales for the McMud already outpace sales of all other McDonald's offerings combined by two-to-one, and Voblya thinks that as other Muscovites learn about McDonald's new Russified hit, sales will skyrocket even further.

"Nothing tickles the Russian palate more than tomatoes, cucumbers, mayonnaise and dill," he said. "We learned from the McFresh sales that even placing two or three of these items onto a standard hamburger was enough to draw customers. So why not get rid of the hamburger and bun, and just give them what they want?"

Plans are in the works to introduce a new addition to the McDonald's character roster. Meet Major McMud, who will join Ronald McDonald in children's appearances across Moscow and into the regions for a series of charity benefits. A takeoff on the Mayor McCheese character, Major McMud wears the uniform of a prison camp warden, and is distinguished by his decidedly Russian features: high cheekbones, flashing gold teeth, and, where the hamburger used to be, Major McMud has a head in the shape of a dollop of mayonnaise, with tomato wedges for ears, a cucumber for a nose and dill for the hair coming out of his moles.

Children in test groups reacted positively to Major McMud. "Young Russian girls are particularly attracted to him and young boys want to be him," said McMud designer Naum Viener, who designed the famous plastic dinosaur above the downtown Praga Restaurant, one of Moscow's main attractions for CIS tourists.

The success of the McMud has been so overwhelming that not only do they plan to introduce it in all of their Eastern European restaurants, but they plan to expand their offerings of similar Russian-accented dishes.

"We found in our test groups that Russians will eat anything, so long as it has mayonnaise and dill," said Tillis.

Test groups reacted "ecstatically" over such planned dishes as mayonnaise with fish scales, mayonnaise discarded yogurt wrappings and dill, and mayonnaise with dirt specially brought in from the nearby Kolkhoz Imina Kosygina, and dill-sprinkled fetus tissue with a dollop of mayonnaise, supplied by abortion clinic number 592.

"We want to call the last one the Filet-O-Mud," beamed Vyobly. Already, Viener is designing a Mudky character, who is curled into the fetal position at all times, to accompany Major McMud on charity benefits.

While Tillis, a Canadian, admits that neither he nor his Western counterparts understand the success of the McMud or its potential off-shoots, he chalks it up to the "mysterious Russian soul."

"One of our Canadian researchers actually vomited when he saw the test subjects devouring the Filet-0-Mud, but then the Russians just scooped up his vomit, mixed it with mayonnaise, sprinkled it with dill, and the next thing you know, they were eating it up for dessert! It just goes to show that tailoring to the local market pays off in the end."

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