Like golden ticket winners to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, the ten remaining candidates for Murphy Goode winery’s much-talked-about $10,000 a month social-networking gig are headed to Healsburg on July 18. Over four wine-soaked days, they’ll take part in a final round of interviews, meet winemaker David Ready, Jr., and experience “hi-jinks, excursions, poker, Liar’s dice, food and, of course, wine drinking,” according the winery.
Making the final cut: Hardy Wallace, author of wine blog DirtySouthWine.com; Adam Beaugh, a DJ and web whiz for the governor of Texas; college student Rocky Slaughter who’s resume includes leading a statewide campaign to change the California state statue in 2006; former reality-show casting director Todd Havens; video producer Kamary Phillips; a former host of two network cable shows and banjo-player, Rachel Reenstra; Spin Magazine digital guru Nicholas Pandolfi; web designer Eric Hwang; Microsoft advertising staffer Annie Lee; and nutrtionist/blogger Jennifer Weber.
Hailing from locales around the country — Austin, Boston, LA, New York, Seattle and Tampa — these hopefuls are busting their humps to land what may be the most coveted job in the wine biz. As “Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent”, the winner will spend six rent-free months touting the the winery on Twitter, Facebook and other online social networking sites. They’ll be paid $60,000 for the half-year gig and be expected to spend plenty of time interfacing with the public, drinking wine, hanging out in the vineyards and making the rest of us green with envy.
Since the contest was announced in April, nearly 2,000 applicants submitted brief video resumes to the winery’s website, areallygoodejob.com. Controversy broke out in June when the winery announced the Top 50 finalists would not be selected based on popular votes from fans (several had launched extensive vote-getting campaigns), but by criteria set forth by the winery. Meaning that candidates actually needed to have the requisite skills needed to create videos, interface with customers, write cohesively and use the Internet.
The winner will be announced on July 21 and begin work at the winery on August 15. Losers go home with some fine memories of Sonoma County and a hangover.
> Watch all the finalists’ videos
loved this article!
From SFGate
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/09/BUJM18I79M.DTL&tsp=1
Among those dismissed: Jim Kopp, a senior marketing director who had been instrumental in creating “Goode Job.”
Gee. You’d think someone would be Congratulating Jim?
I’ve recommended that the best use of funds for this and/or any winery/enterprise in Sonoma County would be to support the production of internet video of so many of our positive community events. Kind of like the North Bay TV Station we never really have had?
Support the people in a positive way and put your “Goode” name on that.
Sour Grapes at Murphy Goode. Boycott this cheesy operation. The people who cooked up this great idea were all laid off just before the final curtain call.
Sleeze does not improve the aroma of the wine!
Call for a boycott on this funeral party.
This seems like a good advertising/publicity stunt…. Starting Aug. 15th though, what are they going to talk about November through February 2010? Ohh, it’s raining…Ohhh, it’s raining again?
I hope they get thier monies worth…
Are you going to come visit the tasting room next Sunday? They are having all 10 candidates pour throughout the day.
Great article! Should be an interesting few days in Sonoma.
Woo-hoo! Thanks for mentioning this CRAZY adventure.
Here’s hoping Murphy-Goode finds their ideal candidate in this ragtag group of peeps. 🙂
You can remove my posts on this blog. They don’t lend anything now. Congrats on your award.
Sure, my pleasure. That is my 50th Birthday, July 18th.
Thanks so much! I changed it.
June 18th? don’t you mean July 18th? (June has past)