In this episode of The Agent of Wealth Podcast, host Marc Bautis is joined by Michael Maloney, is joined by Michael Maloney, Founder and Chief Creative of Brand Force 5, to explore why branding is about much more than a logo — and how the details many business owners overlook can shape customer trust, perception and ultimately, growth.
From the quality of a postcard to the appearance of a service vehicle, every interaction can either strengthen or weaken a brand. Marc and Michael discuss how businesses can create a consistent identity, avoid costly branding mistakes and think of branding as an investment rather than simply another expense.
In this episode, you will learn:
- Why a logo is something people see, but a brand is something people feel and experience.
- The five principles behind the FORCE framework — Focused, Ownable, Relevant, Continuous and Evocative — and how they can guide every aspect of a brand.
- Why inconsistent messaging, visuals and customer experiences can quietly erode trust and credibility.
- How to think about the hidden cost of bad branding — including the customers and opportunities you may never realize you’re losing.
- What new business owners should define and invest in before spending money on marketing materials and campaigns.
- Why AI can be a valuable branding tool, but may still struggle to replace human judgment, emotion and creative insight.
- And more!
Tune in for a conversation about the small details that influence how customers perceive your business and why building a strong brand starts long before you choose a logo.
Resources:
brandforce5.com: (862) 212-3720 | Brand Force 5 on Facebook | Brand Force 5 on LinkedIn | Bautis Financial: 8 Hillside Ave, Suite LL1 Montclair, New Jersey 07042 (862) 205-5000 | Schedule an Introductory Call
Disclosure: The transcript below has been edited for clarity and content. It is not a direct transcription of the full episode, which can be listened to above.
Welcome back to The Agent of Wealth, this is your host Marc Bautis. Today, I’m joined by a special guest, Michael Maloney.
Michael is the Founder and Chief Creative of Brand Force 5, a branding and creative agency that helps businesses build memorable brands that drive growth.
Michael spent more than 20 years working on Madison Avenue, creating packaging, logos, award-winning magazine advertisements, and television commercials for nationally recognized brands. Today, he brings that big-agency experience to small and mid-sized businesses through Brand Force 5, helping companies develop compelling brands, visual identities, websites, marketing materials, and messaging that help them stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
Brand Force 5 approaches every project through its proprietary FORCE framework, ensuring businesses have an identity that not only looks great but also connects with customers and supports long-term growth.
Today, we’ll discuss why branding is much more than just a logo, the biggest branding mistakes businesses make, how a company’s digital presence shapes customer perception, and why investing in branding can produce returns far beyond marketing alone.
Michael, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much, Marc. That’s a great intro. I’m honored to be here. I’ve been a big fan of the podcast, and I’m excited to get started.
Great. I’m looking forward to it, too. I know you’ve spent more than two decades on Madison Avenue working with major global brands before launching Brand Force 5. What inspired you to shift your focus toward helping small and mid-sized businesses?
That’s a great question. The honest answer is that there really was no grand plan. COVID hit, New York shut down and the industry shut down. I’d always helped friends and family with smaller businesses and little side projects, designing things here and there.
Then, we were getting our taxes done, and my accountant said, “Hey, why don’t you have an LLC? Why aren’t you doing this on your own? You should start your own business.”
I’m not wired to do something halfway, so if I’m going to do something, I’m all in. I said, “Well, if I’m going to do it, let me start an LLC.” That meant I needed a logo, a brand and a website. But before all of that, I needed to develop my philosophy, understand what made me different and define what made my offerings different.
That necessity turned into something that I genuinely love doing.
Bringing two decades of experience from working with major brands, along with everything I’d learned from all the people I’ve worked with over the years, and applying that thinking to small and mid-sized businesses really paid off for me.
Yeah, I think having that experience definitely helps. When people hear the word “branding,” a lot of them just think of a logo. How would you define branding, and why is it much broader than visual design?
My go-to answer is usually a quick quote: A logo is something people see; a brand is something people feel or experience.
Starbucks is a great example. You walk into a Starbucks and, of course, there’s their famous mermaid logo. But there’s also an experience: the friendliness of the staff, the aroma of the coffee and the gentle music playing in the background. That’s all part of the brand.
It’s not just the logo. It’s the perception you have when you think about Starbucks later. Branding is everything that helps shape that perception, including the language they use. You’re ordering a venti or a Frappuccino, rather than saying, “Hey, I want a coffee with some whipped cream,” or making other customizations you might make at your local coffee shop. At Starbucks, that language is part of the experience and the feeling.
What I always tell people is that every touchpoint is either reinforcing your brand or weakening it.
For example, if you’re getting a postcard in the mail and it’s printed on thin paper that’s a little wrinkled, that’s an experience you’re having with that brand, and it’s influencing your perception. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the logo is or how great the language or headline is. The fact that the paper isn’t the best quality is going to make you feel a certain way.
That’s an example of weakening the brand.
On the other hand, if I get a fantastic postcard in the mail that’s printed on thick stock with a soft-touch finish, and it has a weight to it when I hold it in my hand, I automatically trust that company more than the other one.
That’s all part of branding. And that’s where a lot of people fall down or miss the boat, because they’re either taking shortcuts or they don’t fully understand the impact of those touchpoints.
Yeah, I could see that. And especially, I think the example you gave with Starbucks is great because people may think beyond just a logo and fonts and things like that, but you talked about the experience and how the customer feels.
I know you have the FORCE framework. Can you walk us through each element, explain why it’s important and talk about how you help a company build a brand?
Yeah, of course. This is one of my favorite things to talk about.
At Brand Force 5, FORCE is five letters, and it stands for Focused, Ownable, Relevant, Continuous and Evocative. That’s the framework. Those are the principles that we apply to everything we do, whether it’s a logo, a brochure or a website.
So when we’re developing your brand or designing a logo, the first thing we want to do is make sure that it’s focused. We want to make sure we don’t have a lot of miscellaneous elements. We’re focusing on your business and your message, and we’re putting that together in a way that your potential customers understand.
The O is for Ownable. We see this constantly, where people are using Google Images, stock art or clip art to create their logo. First of all, you don’t own that.
And not only do you not own it, but another business could open up and use something very similar, if not the exact same clip art that you used. So we make sure that we’re doing custom design and custom illustrations. Everything is created specifically for your brand so that it’s ownable.
The R is for Relevant. A lot of times, we get clients who say, “Hey, I really love unicorns. Can we put a unicorn in my logo?”
Well, if your business is geared toward eight-year-old girls, then maybe, yeah, we can put a unicorn in your logo. But in reality, we want to use things that are relevant to your business and relevant to your messaging.
The C is for Continuous, and there are actually two meanings that we use for continuous.
The first is continuity across time. When we design or create something for you, we don’t want it to be dated a year or two from now. We’re not just using the trendy font for 2025 or the color of the year for 2026 because it looks great and is really on trend right now. Two years from now, we don’t want to have to redo it because it looks dated or old.
The other meaning of Continuous is continuity across media. This happens sometimes when someone designs something that looks amazing on a business card, but then the client needs to use a larger version of it and it starts to break up or lose some of its meaning or messaging.
A really simple thing that happens quite often is that people hire someone to design a logo, and they receive a low-resolution version of it. Then, through no fault of their own, maybe because of file organization or something else, they start using the wrong version of the logo.
This actually happened to someone we both know, and I’ll tell you that story another time. They blew up a flyer and ghosted their logo in the background, but it had a Fiverr logo watermark in it.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. They were like, “Hey, I blew my logo up, and there’s a watermark on here.”
So Continuous is a big one. We want to make sure you can take your logo and that it looks great on a business card, on your website, or if I wrap your vehicle and put it on the side of your van. It should still hold up and look great.
Sometimes that requires us to design different versions of the logo because the kerning, which is the space between letters, might look great on a business card at a small size. But when we wrap it around your van and your logo is now four feet wide, we need to go in and make sure that the spacing between the A and the U is the same, or visually similar, to the spacing between the T and the I.
Those are the little things that we take pride in and that we excel at.
Then, moving on, the E is for Evocative, and this is really one of my favorites.
Sometimes people get confused, or they don’t know how to verbally describe what they’re looking for. They’ll come to us and say, “I really just want a cool logo. I want it to be really cool.”
But that means something different to everyone.
The E for Evocative means that we want to put some meaning into your logo. We want there to be something that, when you look at it, evokes a feeling or a memory. It’s like, “Oh, when I see that logo, it reminds me of having peanuts at a baseball game when I was a kid.” Or, “I read this brochure, and the way it’s written evokes this warmth that reminds me of Grandma making homemade cookies.”
Those are the things that can sometimes be difficult to describe, but it’s that feeling you get when you see something.
I guess that’s probably a challenge because I get that a lot, too, when working with people in financial planning. They’ll come in, and I’ll ask, “What are your goals? What are you trying to do?” And they’re like, “I don’t know.”
For that person who comes to you and says, “I’m looking for a cool logo” or “I want cool branding,” how do you go from that response to creating something evocative that also fits everything else a logo or brand should accomplish?
We’ve talked about this before, and we talk about it in BeSure as well with Dave Facone, who we both know. It comes down to asking questions.
It’s the interview portion upfront, where we continuously ask questions, gather as much information as possible and learn as much as we can from the person.
Because, again, something that’s cool to me might not be cool to my 16-year-old son. You really have to dig in, ask the right questions and get to know the person. You have to understand what they’re looking for in order to be able to deliver it.
On that topic, AI is making it easier to create logos, websites and marketing content. I think this is probably something AI would struggle with: helping that person who doesn’t really know what they want to do.
Exactly. And AI is great. We use AI, and I use it for certain things. I think it’s an incredible tool for research, organization and speeding up tasks that I wouldn’t normally want to do.
I always say this: I’m not a spreadsheet guy. That’s why we hire Bautis Financial to take care of our finances, because I’m not a numbers guy. I’m a creative guy.
I don’t want to break my arm patting myself on the back, but I’m really good at what I do. I’m not as good at organization and some of the other things that I use AI for.
We don’t really use it for ideation. We use it to create spreadsheets, keep track of things, set reminders and things like that.
Because honestly, right now, there’s probably someone out there with a terrible idea, and AI is telling them that it’s brilliant and that it’s a great business for them to start.
It’s the human judgment that’s missing. It’s the human judgment, the emotion and that warmth that you’re never going to get from AI. It’s a great tool, but it can’t replace the human element.
Yeah. I’m sure some business owners hesitate to spend money on branding because they look at it as a cost rather than an investment. How do you help people shift that mindset and see branding as an asset — something that can actually generate revenue rather than just being an expense?
Yeah, this is a big one. We get this a lot.
Sometimes I’ll talk about ROI, and I’ll get a blank stare back. Then I have to explain what return on investment means and maybe even give people an example.
What I often like to say is that the cost of good branding isn’t always easy to define because there’s no invoice that says, “Hey, my branding is great. It’s working really, really well, and it cost me X amount of money.”
The cost of bad branding is the thing that’s really hard to see. It’s the customers you don’t win.
It’s the guy who sent me that postcard on really crappy paper that I threw in the garbage because I thought, “How am I going to trust somebody like this?”
Actually, by the way, that guy was a financial advisor. He used the cheapest paper he could find to send me a postcard.
And he doesn’t know how many clients he missed out on or how many potential clients he lost. There’s no invoice for that.
There is an invoice for good branding, yes. But the cost of bad branding is hard to see because you don’t know what you’re missing.
That’s where I try to explain the return on investment.
When people see that your vehicle has your logo on it and it’s wrapped, and all of the employees getting out of that truck are wearing custom polo shirts with your logo on them and speaking in your brand language, those are all things that are really hard to put a price on. But they help people understand the value of branding.
There’s actually a gutter cleaning company here in New Jersey that I will never use again because their vans are always filthy.
The guys are always a mess, and one time they left a broom on my roof.
They will forever be associated with that color and that logo for me. My neighbors and I will never use them because everyone in the neighborhood saw what happened. I’m on a corner property, and people driving up and down the block could literally see a broom sitting on my roof.
I had to call someone else to bring a ladder and get the broom off my roof.
Wow. No way.
It’s a funny example, but it’s a true story.
Do you see business owners struggle with consistency across their brand? We’ve talked about a lot of different elements — logos, websites, social media, printed materials and even the wrapping on a truck.
Why is consistency so important, and how do you help people make sure everything stays consistent?
That brings up a great point. There are the three Cs: Clarity, Consistency and Credibility. They all kind of feed into and reinforce one another.
Clarity means that people immediately understand who you are, what you do and why they should hire you or care about what you’re offering.
Consistency is so important, and we see this all the time — not just with branding, but with websites, social media and messaging.
People hire somebody, they get a logo and then, over the years, staff changes. Someone might change the logo a little bit or alter it, and it starts to evolve unintentionally. Eventually, the visual identity kind of falls apart.
You lose that consistency, and when you lose consistency, you start to lose credibility.
Professional design, accurate information and reviews on your website — all of those things add to your credibility.
But as I mentioned before, every touchpoint is a chance for you to gain or lose credibility, integrity and trust with your clients.
If your consistency falls apart, your clarity can fall apart, and your credibility drops. If your credibility isn’t great, then maybe that’s affecting your clarity. Those three things all feed into and reinforce — or affect — one another.
It’s so easy to do, but there are so many businesses that miss the mark.
They’ll say, “Oh, well, sometimes we use the blue logo, and sometimes we use the turquoise one. It doesn’t make a difference.”
It does make a difference. People will see it, notice it and form judgments based on it.
Yeah, and I think that’s what I’ve noticed about marketing in general. You don’t always realize how marketing affects you.
Even though you may not consciously say, “Oh, this brand is inconsistent here,” you still recognize it. And I think it kind of goes back to those three Cs. I don’t know if it’s subliminal or what, but you do form judgments based on those things, even if you’re telling yourself, “No, I’m not forming a judgment.”
Yeah, it’s true. Consistency builds recognition and trust.
It’s all those interactions, even subliminally. And that’s a good point because we kind of forget about that these days. There’s so much subliminal messaging, and there’s so much that your mind remembers and associates with certain feelings.
Consistency — or a lack of consistency — can affect that recognition and trust.
It also goes back to the Continuous part of the FORCE framework. Consistency doesn’t mean that everything has to look exactly the same. It just means that everything should feel like it’s coming from the same brand.
So when I see something, I might think, “Okay, their logo is blue, and now I see the blue trucks. That reminds me that it’s that gutter cleaning company.”
It’s all those little cues that shape how you feel about a company.
And if that’s lacking, you might see a billboard on Route 17 and not realize that it belongs to that company. Therefore, the thousands of dollars they spent on that billboard could be wasted because of that lack of consistency.
Yeah. If someone is launching a new business today, what are the first branding investments you would encourage them to make, and when should they make them?
I’m sure there are a lot of new business owners who say, “You know what? I’m going to worry about this first and get to the branding aspect later.”
Yeah, this is a big one because we get clients like this all the time.
I just worked with a woman who’s starting a contracting company, and we really had to dig deep. We had to go back to the beginning because she thought she wanted to do things a certain way.
But the big thing I tell people is that you have to start by defining the business. You have to understand who you are, who your clients are — who you’re trying to reach — and what’s your story.
What makes you different? Why should someone hire you?
Even naming is something that we offer, but it’s almost a different business from the design side because naming requires such a high level of thinking and so much research.
You really need to define your business and then, from there, invest in your identity. Invest in that visual identity first.
And it’s not just your logo. It’s everything around it: the typography, the color, the imagery you want to use and, of course, the voice.
We have a client we’ve worked with over the years who is very specific about the words they use to define certain parts of the job. It’s interesting because that has become part of their branding.
All new employees are trained not to say certain things. For instance, they might say, “Don’t use the word ‘cheap.'”
That becomes part of their brand.
Those are all things that you really need to invest in and define early on so that you can build your brand correctly from the start.
Otherwise, you might start off and later decide, “You know what? From now on, we’re going to do things this way. Well, we spent all that money on those postcards last month, but that’s not reflected there, so let’s not use those postcards anymore.”
That’s an example of an investment that is now wasted because things were done in the wrong order.
You don’t need to invest in everything on day one to start off on the right foot, but you do need to invest in the right things to make sure you’re building your brand the right way.
Right. Yeah, I think you made a good point about the postcards because I see a lot of business owners kind of throw stuff against the wall and say, “Oh, I’m going to try this, and then I’m going to try that. Oh, this didn’t work, so I’m going to move on to something else and spend money on this.”
And then that doesn’t work either.
I think having an overall strategy for your branding, your campaigns and how everything fits together can definitely be helpful.
Absolutely. Another thing I find is that people are constantly evolving and changing things.
They’ll create a billboard or a postcard, get some early feedback from it and immediately want to evolve it because they’re like, “Well, people are responding to this.”
And it’s like, “Okay, slow down for a minute.”
Yeah, maybe you’re getting a 35% response rate, but you have to wait until you have all of the information.
You can’t just keep evolving things because then you start to dilute the messaging.
You need to step back and look at the big picture, which can sometimes be hard to do.
Right. Yeah.
All right, Michael, we’re just about out of time. It’s been a fantastic conversation.
Branding often gets reduced to colors and logos, but you’ve shown that it really is about creating trust, communicating value and building a memorable customer experience that supports long-term business growth.
Before we close out, I want to hand it over to you. Share any resources you may have. Where can listeners go to get in touch with you or learn more about Brand Force 5?
Absolutely. Thank you, Marc. This has been fantastic.
You can find us at brandforcefive.com — that’s Brand Force and the number five — and reach out to us. We’d love to work with new business owners and existing business owners.
You can also find us on LinkedIn and Instagram. We’d love to talk with you more.
Marc, this was fantastic. Thanks so much for having me on.
Great. We’ll include links to all of that information in the show notes.
Thanks again, Michael. And thank you to everyone who tuned in to today’s episode.
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