When he’s not jet-setting to Tahiti or hobnobbing with his best friend Tom Cruise*, Sean O’Brien is just a regular guy. He’s 29, single, never pays full price when shopping online and likes to snowboard with friends in Tahoe. 

“Good morning, Sacramento! It’s a perfect day for a pig roast. Come out and join us,” hog farmer Perrin Clark tweeted on a long-awaited day in May.

Product and company branding is more complex than a logo, a slogan and a catchy marketing campaign. Branding is the way consumers talk about your product or service, how they remember you and how they expect you to behave.

When Albert and Frances Lundberg fled the Dust Bowl-ravaged cornfields of Nebraska in 1937 to settle in the greener pastures of the northern Sacramento Valley, they did so with hope for the future.

In the Capital Region, it’s up to each county to reel in recovery by marketing to businesses that stimulate economic growth.

The Great Recession has cast a long shadow over the Capital Region. The economy has been static. Recovery has been slow. But in the hard-hit hospitality business, the pause has spurred opportunity for reinvention.

Monica Gonzalez recently logged onto the Facebook page of Weave Inc., an organization that treats survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, to post a simple message about how the nonprofit helped her overcome a nightmarish ordeal.

When photographer Jill Carmel moved to Sacramento in 2008, she brought a bevy of cameras, a keen eye for composition and her dream of launching a niche business in a new city — a risky move, but passion trumped fear.

Morton’s The Steakhouse. Special reservation. Best seat in the house. And a bottle of wine ingloriously named “The Prisoner.” It was a first date, and I may have overdone it trying to impress the woman who would later become my wife.