Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Week 7 EOC - The pitch



Incan inspired Merken jerky from Chile. It's jerky with a traditional spice blend made of dried and smoked aji cacho de cabra chiles, toasted coriander seeds, cumin, and salt. With a spicy, smooth blend of spices. Merken Jerky is the snack of choice when enjoying your favorite game at the bar with a beer in your hand. Not too spicy but not the same boring, bland jerky from the corner store. Merken jerky comes from thousands of years of tradition and culture dating back to the 1500s. "Ch'arki", a name derived from the Quechuan language of the Incas (which literally translates into "dried meat"), later evolved into what we now call jerky. The discovery of Jerky allowed humans to both store food for long periods of time and have an easily carried, dense source of nutrition to take with them on journeys. Jerky is both flavorful and compact and almost any meat (except pork) can be made into jerky. Some say Native Americans made the first jerky (buffalo jerky) thousands of years ago, while others say an ancient Inca tribe called the Quechua made jerky as early as the 1500's. Whatever the case, this time tested recipe has been passed from generation to generation.
When the first Europeans arrived in the New World, they found that the Natives were making a dried meat product that did not need to be consumed immediately and they instantly knew that jerky would be beneficial to them. What the Native American tribes called "pemmican" was jerky meat added to either crushed dried fruit or animal fat. The Native Americans taught the settlers how to cut and prepare the meat into long strips and later shared with them the entire jerky-making process and some variations of seasonings to make different recipes. With this newfound knowledge and time-tested recipe, the European pioneers found themselves cooking and consuming jerky more than ever before; it was absolutely the snack of choice.
Jerky reached its height of popularity during the expansion into North America, where traders and explorers prized it as an essential source of nutrition as they traveled to new areas with limited accessibility to fresh food and supplies along the way. The fact that meat could be hunted anywhere along the trails that the settlers were following to the West made this method of preparing meat an extremely valuable skill. This was also the introduction of other jerky meat types such as turkey, goose, and other wild game. As the industrial age in America approached many companies saw the potential of producing jerky products in large quantities for mass consumption. Today millions of people around the world now enjoy jerky products. Join the bandwagon and enjoy the world's best tasting snack!
During his time in South America, Fogg tried and tasted many foods. Several of which had an old spice recipe known as Merken. He took a liking to this set of spices and tried combining it with different foods. eventually he came up with putting it on dried meat...while experimenting, suddenly Mr. Fix caught up to him and blew the door open to the small one bedroom apartment he had been staying in with the lovely owner Consuela. Fogg hastily snatched up all of his meat and merken within arms reach and jumped out of the second story window, falling straight onto a cart full of corn and toppling over onto the street. He then sprinted down the street and around the corner to his balloon and made a quick getaway.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

EOC: Week 5


While the traditionally used method of requesting an application and returning it to an employer still exists, many companies are now turning to the faster and more informative method of using social media to seek out and recruit new employees. Some job sites have been around for almost a decade, like Monster.com, an online job posting site as well as a sight to post a resume or portfolio for potential employers to search for. The newer, LinkedIn, job site is a corporate style site used for the same purpose as Monster.com. However, LinkedIn also utilizes a user profile as a sort of pre interview process so that the candidates are able to express themselves as well as flaunt their skills and past experiences by posting their work on their profile.

Many companies are looking past Monster.com and LinkedIn due to the overwhelming information and social marketing influencing the profiles on Facebook. The majority of social-media traffic to Waste Management Inc.'s careers website comes from Facebook, beating out LinkedIn, said Jenny DeVaughn, manager of social media and employment branding.Companies are able to get a much clearer picture of the person they are hiring as well as the ability to see what other people think about them and the usual habits of their potential employee. More companies are using Facebook as a corporate reference because it is a real-time and real life online persona of anybody they seek to employ.

Companies like Monster and LinkedIn, are now even offering a cash reward for anybody who refers somebody through Facebook. Companies are becoming so infatuated with the idea that Facebook is a true-to-life representation of the people they seek to hire that they are now starting to pay people who use Facebook as a tool in helping to search for new people and keep in contact with someone they feel has what they are looking for. Many corporations are now building entire marketing and hiring strategies solely around Facebook and how it is able to connect and inform on their potential candidates.