Big Gnome

For most of you who know me personally, you know I’m in love with craft beer. For 4 minutes of inspiration, watch I Am A Craft Brewer. The quote that sticks out to me the most is “We don’t chase after trends. We create them.” That’s why I love being part of the craft beer movement (actually, it’s straight up family and community) and the unique, creative branding, PR and marketing efforts. Craft brewers create. The big guys simply chase – and have the advertising budgets to keep pushing the nasty.

But here’s the disconnect.

This has been on my mind for awhile. I’m disappointed when a craft brewery puts lip service into their brand about being radical, experimental, unique or bad-ass, and their product falls short. If your flight of craft beer is uninspired and forgettable, no amount of strategic messaging, advertising campaigns, quirky copy, or re-branding will matter. A forged personality will only take you so far before the poor quality product or service is exposed.

The positive call to action? Create (or drink) amazing beer. Be confident and unafraid in how you position your company. You may lose some of your audience. (But you’ll lose everyone if your product stinks.)

Thanks to a close friend, I now love someecards. They get my “Keeping it Real” award of the week. And with the tagline, “when you care enough to hit send,” and other little nuggets, in just mere seconds I got a very clear idea of what they’re all about. It’s hilarious, irreverent, memorable and easy to use. They may win for most creative reply when you sign up for their e-newsletter: “Celebrate by sending an alarming number of cards.”

Today’s Menu: Orange Coat, a gourmet web design company.

Recently I had the pleasure of lunching with Evan Tishuk and Jim Ciallella of Orange Coat and learning about the semantic web: the idea that the web itself can become a database – and meaning that is embedded in the data can make it easier for both humans and computers to understand, transmit, store and relate.

For those of you who’ve never even thought about this before, there are tools we use right now that are considered steps toward developing a more semantic web. If your head doesn’t explode from this mind-blowing podcast, feel free to watch this video and read Jim’s blog post.