Posted: 12/2/2007 7:00:16 AM EDT
[#12]
Quoted: Holy Sh!t I know the answer to something on this board! I spent a year as the manager of cost accounting/assistant plant controller. I'll fill you in. A slim jim is made of roughly 45% headmeat (meat scrapped off a cow's skull), 18% mechanically seperated chicken (aka chicken paste), 35% various other meats (cheek, shank, etc). The balance is made up of spices, water, corn syrup, and liquid smoke. These %'s are all the pre-cook weight. The plant is located in Garner, NC which is just south of raleigh off of I-40. | archive.salon.com/business/col/shalit/2000/09/14/jerky/print.html
Sampson took pains to emphasize that, in his view, there's "a hard road ahead" for jerky. "We want to convince people that this thing they never think about is actually a viable snacking alternative," he says. At the same time, he says, he needs to get folks to stop thinking about Slim Jims. "Right now, if people think jerky, they think Slim Jim," he says. "And we're not that. We're this other thing."
There is, as Sampson explained to me, a kind of natural order of jerky. At the bottom of the barrel is the humble meat stick -- high in fat, so-so in protein and made up of bits of the anatomy of animals that most people would prefer not to eat. "Think about a meat stick," Sampson muses. "It is highly processed. It has a large amount of stuff in it. You can't quite be sure what they put in there. They grind up beef. They grind up chicken ... They put a number of different species in there." Sampson points me toward the ingredients stated on a Slim Jim. "You'll notice that the second ingredient listed is something called 'mechanically separated chicken.' Now, I'm not going to get into how the chicken is separated. Let's just say that it's a pretty interesting process. But, as terrible as it is, it gives the product its mouth feel."
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But teenagers are unlikely to be weaned off their Slim Jims by the charms of Grandma Oberto alone. To accomplish that task, the Frito Lay contingent is turning to opposition research. "We've done focus groups with Slim Jim users," Sampson says. "We've asked them, 'Do you know what you're actually eating?' 'Nope, I never read the ingredients statement.' 'Well,' we say, 'why don't you take a look at that?'"
To the consternation of Sampson and his team, the Slim Jim loyalists turn out to be a pretty stoical crew. "They didn't seem too bothered by it," Sampson says. "Maybe one or two would ask, 'What's mechanically separated chicken?' 'What do you think it is,' the moderator was instructed to reply. People tended to draw pictures of a chicken carcass flying at a jet engine," Sampson says wearily.
Informed of the true provenance of mechanically separated chicken, respondents "would get very quiet," Sampson says. "You could kind of see them working it through their heads."
"Does that bother you?" the moderator asked. Inevitably, Sampson says, the answer was no. "They don't care," he says. "They keep saying, 'I don't care what's in it. I recognize it as a Slim Jim.'"
My next call was to Jeff Slater, vice president of marketing for Goodmark Foods, which manufactures and distributes Slim Jims. I was curious to hear Slater's response to Sampson's description of his product as a repellent substance, counter to the dictates of common sense, good health and kindness to animals. I was surprised by his reaction. Far from getting angry, Slater seemed to positively revel in his product's noxiousness. "I mean, think of it," he says. "It's this gross stick. When you bite into it, it snaps. It's nasty. But that's OK."
"Teen boys love the product," explains Jo McKinney, account director at North Castle Partners, Slim Jim's ad agency. "They really relate to it. They think it's nasty. And it is. It's just a nasty, nasty brand. With nasty, nasty advertising to go along with it."
The ads are indeed nasty, treating viewers to a peek down the digestive tract and into the stomach, where Slim Jim Guy inevitably creates havoc. In the most recent execution, a teenage boy eats a Slim Jim and then jumps into a pool. "You're supposed to wait 30 minutes," yells Slim Jim Guy. "How about a beefy, spicy cramp?" Slim Jim Guy jumps up and down, pulling on the interior walls of the stomach, ultimately giving the boy a terrible cramp. The spot closes with Slim Jim Guy ripping through the logo and bellowing, "Eat me!"
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