At no point in this piece will Negronis be discussed. No references to Campari, no smug mentions of “equal parts,” no grainy overhead shots of a rocks glass beside a paperback of On the Road. You’re safe here.

Instead, I want to talk about identity. Or more accurately, the identity crisis we’ve all stumbled into like it’s a funhouse mirror maze. It’s digital, vaguely monetized, and endlessly scrollable.

Somewhere along the line, it became perfectly normal to have two selves: the you you actually are and the you you curate. One for offline, one for online. One for your real life, and one for your “personal brand.” I have a hard enough time being the one version of Tom Ostrom. A second might collapse the spacetime continuum. A third, and I’d probably get my own Disney+ spin-off.

It’s not just that we’ve split ourselves in two. It’s that we’ve begun to favor the artificial over the actual. The version that’s run through six filters and captioned with someone else’s quote feels more comfortable, more presentable, more engaging than the real thing. The internet has stopped being a tool and has instead become a second reality. One without friction, consequence, or much sense of, well… reality.

Can anybody tell me what, exactly, is a content creator? Near as I can tell, it’s someone who posts things online and hopes a brand gives them money for it. Aren’t we all wise to this grift by now? I’m not against creativity, and I’m certainly all for capitalism. What I am against is confusion. And we’ve confused performing with being. We’ve confused visibility with value. We’ve mistaken the applause for the achievement.

At Ostrom Creative, we spend almost all of our time doing the exact opposite. We strip things back, we boil things down. Finding what’s true, what’s genuine. We think that’s how brands, and more importantly, people, ought to act. The higher the proof, the greater the potency.

Here’s the thing about the human brain… It’s more evolved than you think. It can sniff out the difference between what’s genuine and what’s born in a lab. It knows when something’s been fluffed, filtered, or faked, and it instinctively moves away from it, like a Boomer stepping around a half-caf, lavender oat-milk, cold foam with sprinkles.

We don’t want your brand to be coffee-adjacent. We want it to be real. Singular. Fully caffeinated. Not some endlessly sliced identity optimized for engagement metrics or SEO. Just one honest, unfiltered version of what makes you you—or what makes your company worth paying attention to. One is plenty. Unless we’re talking about Negronis. Which we are not… obviously.

Here’s to you.

— Tom
Free thinking for hire™