Seven Orange County residents are among more than 300 people competing for one of the coolest jobs being promoted right now in the food and beverage industry: a $10,000 a month gig Tweeting about wine.
Yep, that’s right.
Murphy-Goode Winery in Sonoma County is hunting for a social media guru to foist its brand into the bold world of Facebook and Twitter.
The main skills needed: ability to taste hundreds of wines, and write about it.
Applicants must submit their application via video, which is hosted on the winery’s Website.
"John" from Irvine
Since word of the “Really Goode” job hit the Internet in late April, more than 300 video applications have been submitted to the California winery.
The public can vote on their favorite applicant, but the winery will have final say on who gets the job. So far, seven wine drinkers/job seekers are from Orange County: Huntington Beach (3 ) Dana Point, Aliso Viejo and Irvine.
Lauren Yacker, 34, of Huntington Beach, who recently got laid off from her Irvine public relations job, thinks she’s up for the task.
“It would be so amazing for an OC Gal to have a real chance at getting a job like this in this economy,” Yacker (shown above) told me via email. “I think that I have the perfect personality for this job — I’m outgoing and high energy.”
And most importantly: “I do drink wine, and enjoy it.”
Yacker, who joked in her video (below) that she’s got the right name to “yack” online about wine, is using her marketing prowess to harness votes.
She’s emailed her Murphy-Goode video to all her business contacts, hoping she’ll snag enough votes to earn the winery’s attention. She’s also using her Facebook and Twitter pages to bring attention to her video, which according to her, is among the Top 30 most popular videos.
Still, she’s up against some stiff competition. The top vote-getter so far is chef-blogger Jenna Weber from Florida. She’s studied cooking in Paris, and pens the Eat Live Run food blog, which gets about 700,000 page views a month.
To vote for Yacker or any other candidate, you must go to the Murphy-Goode site.
If you are interested in the job, the deadline to apply is June 19. A winner will be selected in mid-July. The job starts in August.
Good luck.
weird.
What a life,drinking and Twittering,next DUI and Twittering,I see it coming.
Alcoholics.
“Unemployed social media expert” is a redundant term.
True! And this Yacker dame says she’s “outgoing and high energy”. Great! Except you need neither of those attributes to write 140 character tweets from the relative comfort of a couch. This takes “employee” to a new low-standard. In essence, what the winner will be is an advertisement for the company… not a legitimate, walking, talking, research doing, business plan writing, marketing plan implemeter… nope, they’ll be nothing more than a cheap (only $60K!!) advertisement for this wine company.
So much for eduction. So much for professionalism. So much for a job well done. Welcome to the New American Economy.
Why don’t you feature ALL the OC applicants?
Jessina..you make a good point. I did not try to reach out to every OC applicant because it would have taken me several days to track everyone down. The Murphy-Goode site doesn’t provide direct emails to the applicants. Lauren contacted me to tell me her story. I had heard about the contest a week or so ago…Read it in LATimes, I think. Her pitch caught my eye. Though she wanted an exclusive piece on her, I told her to be fair, I’d have to mention if other OC people had applied. So, I scrolled through every page on the wine site, and found five other people from OC. I listed the cities where they applied from, uploaded a photo of the Irvine applicant, and provided a link to “View” all candidates. Perhaps , I should have provided direct links to every OC applicant. Nancy
Ha! First we become a victim of drunken calling… now we have to endure drunken twittering. lol… wow, if only our grandparents could see us now.
haha! great point. all of this twittering… facebooking… etc. is something i know we will look back on as a society and say a collective “what were we thinking??!”
our grandparents may not be able to see us now, but our grandchildren and infinite future generations will as well…. “oh look mom! it’s a picture of grandma… um, pulling her shirt down… um, and her boob is showing…. er, and she has a giant bottle of vodka in her other hand…. um, and a condom on her head”…