Vibe Marketing

AI That Saves You Hours a Day

Craig Brooks — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Most people are still typing one-off prompts and wondering why AI gives them generic answers. The problem isn't the tool. It's that you never gave it your context. In this one, Craig and Caitlin open up their actual AI stacks, the tools they pay for, the ones that saved real hours this week, and how each of them built a thinking partner that knows their business well enough to push back.

What We Cover:

Why a thinking partner is only as good as the context you feed it, and how Craig loads his with team roster, financials, and real business data
Caitlin's "second brain" setup in Claude Cowork: a markdown brain file, a memory file, and a session-audit skill that holds her accountable when she's procrastinating
The daily brief that reads your email and Notion for you, and how it surfaced a brand opportunity Caitlin had completely missed
Craig's tool-by-tool breakdown: Poke as the $10 pocket assistant, Claude as the thinking partner, Perplexity as the researcher, plus Higgsfield for scary-good AI video
Why orchestrators like Perplexity Computer can replace nine subscriptions, and where the real cost barriers kick in

The One Thing: Start with the thinking partner, and feed it your context. Set it up as a project, give it your real business data, and update it regularly. You do not need code or full automation to get value. Even the "training wheels" version saves hours a day, whether you are the owner, second in command, or an assistant.

Craig Brooks is CEO of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer and strategist. They love talking about marketing, talking to people that do marketing, and marketing themselves.

The Chef's Kiss Client (And How to Find More)

Craig Brooks — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Ask a business owner who their customer is and you'll often hear "everyone." It feels safe. It's actually the thing quietly costing them money. This episode is about getting narrow on purpose, and why the right customer does more for your bottom line than a bigger net ever will.

What We Cover:

Why "I want everyone" is the answer that keeps you stuck, and how to get narrow enough to actually win
The one-to-one coaching analogy: aim at your single ideal customer and you still catch everyone around them
How to build a real persona from your values first, the actions that match them, and the actions that don't
The hidden marketing that shows up when you nail it: better reviews, more referrals, and staff who sell for you without realizing it
For established businesses: how to look back over 5, 10, and 15 years to find the projects that were a "chef's kiss" and reverse-engineer your ideal client from them

The One Thing: Before you chase more leads, figure out which past clients felt good for everyone, the work was strong, the team enjoyed it, and it was profitable. That trifecta points straight at your ideal customer. Reducing that friction is how you make more money and spend less doing it.

Craig Brooks is CEO of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer and strategist. They like talking about marketing and biz stuff.

Refresh or Rebrand? How to Know Which You Need

Craig Brooks — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Most business owners think they need a rebrand. Most of them don't. In this one, Caitlin and Craig take opposite corners on refresh versus rebrand, then land somewhere that actually helps you decide which one your business needs and which one would just break what's already working.

What we cover:

The real difference: a refresh evolves your look and messaging while keeping your core intact. A rebrand fundamentally changes who you are.
The "Frankenstein" test: how five years of tweaks, trend-chasing, and one-off logos turn a brand into a mess you can't read or measure
Why a converting website you hate is a refresh problem, not a rebrand problem (and why you might just need to deal with the look)
The one situation that actually forces a rebrand: a rotten core you can't fix, like the outdoor business undone by a former partner's reputation
How to test changes without risking what's working: adjust slowly, change one thing, give it 30 days

The One Thing: Before you touch anything, ask why. List your problems, name what you think the fixes are, then decide. If your business is doing well and you just can't pinpoint the frustration, you almost certainly need a refresh, not a rebrand. A rebrand means you're speaking to the wrong people entirely, and if you were, you'd already know it.

Craig Brooks is CEO of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer and strategist. New episodes dropping soon. Follow Vibe Marketing wherever you listen to podcasts.

You Might Be a Font Criminal (Here's the Fix)

Craig Brooks — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0400

You picked a font because you liked it. That might be the problem. In this episode, Craig and Caitlin get into "font crimes," the typeface choices that quietly cost you customers without anyone ever telling you why. Craig even confesses his own past as a font criminal, the kind David used to call out years ago.

What We Cover:

Why your brain recognizes typography the way it recognizes a circle, triangle, or square, and why consistency creates subconscious brand recall
The case against using the same fonts as every competitor in your space (if they zig, you zag)
Why scripty and cursive fonts can tank your search visibility, since Google can read a typeface but not an image of one
The declining-cursive problem: entire generations can't read it anymore, so it belongs in accents of four words or less, never full sentences
The two-to-three typeface rule, and why more than three makes the brain work to figure out what to read first

The One Thing: Your audience is the one who has to live with your font, not you. Your brain already knows what your copy says, so legibility was never your problem. Pick the typeface that reduces friction for the person trying to read you, choose what works for your audience over what you personally love, and you've done the job.

Craig Brooks is CEO of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer and strategist. Got a font crime to confess? Reach out and tell us what you've been getting away with.

Stop Trying to Sound Professional

Craig Brooks — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Most roofers fight an uphill battle on trust. Carrie Moreau decided the answer was a cape. As "the Roofing Wonder Woman" behind Certified Best Roofing in Central Florida, she runs a business that pulls 90% of its revenue from in-person networking, in an industry where most companies spend 10% of revenue on SEO.

What we cover:

The two-business-card system: when the cosplay card comes out, when the standard one does, and why both belong in her wallet
Why "Wonder Woman" works as a trust signal in an industry that gets lumped in with used car sales
The 8-minute rule Carrie uses to stay open to every entrepreneur without burning out
Why referrals "have babies, grandchildren, and great grandchildren," and how she tracks tier 1 through tier 4
Caitlin's reframe: Carrie didn't try to become someone she wasn't, she just paired who she already was with something the world already recognized

The One Thing: You don't have to become someone else to stand out. Find one thing that's already true about you, pair it with something universally recognized, then lean in with conviction. The detractors will be loud. The opportunities will be louder.

Carrie Moreau is co-owner of Certified Best Roofing and host of the Wonder Women Who Build podcast, serving all of Central Florida. Call or text the Roofing Wonder Woman at 407-602-3363.

If this one got you thinking about how you show up, send it to a business owner who's still blending in.

What AI Still Can't Do (And Why It Matters for Your Business)

Craig Brooks — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0400

AI can spin up a working website in an hour. The real question is what happens when you need a careers page, a CRM integration, or a fix at 2 a.m. David Forman, Co-Founder of Clarity Creative Group, has been coding since he was 11 and has been building agencies with Craig for 17 years. He joined us to talk about where AI actually helps a business, where it quietly leaves you exposed, and how to tell when a tool is making things up.

What we cover:

Why this tech cycle feels different from the ones that came before, and the parts that are just hype in a new jacket
The muffin shop problem: how AI gets you to a minimum viable product while leaving architecture, security, and scale on the table
A real example of AI confidently sending David toward a WordPress setting that has not existed for over a decade
The tools each of us actually uses (Perplexity Computer, Claude, ChatGPT, Notebook LM, Cursor) and where every one of them breaks
Caitlin's pushback prompt: how she keeps Claude from being her hype man and gets honest answers with sources

The One Thing: Open the AI tool you trust and ask it to count how many hours you have spent going back and forth on a single decision in your business. The number is your answer. Caitlin found out she had burned 37 hours questioning her own positioning, hired a copywriter that week, and was done. Use AI to tell you when it is time to stop using AI and start buying your time back.

David Forman is Co-Founder of Clarity Creative Group, where he leads custom development, integrations, and architecture.

Craig Brooks is also Co-Founder of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer and strategist.

You're Not Your Customer

Craig Brooks — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Most business owners are quietly making brand decisions based on what they personally like, and paying for it in ways they never measure. This episode gets honest about the gap between owner taste and what the market actually responds to, plus the questions that help you tell the difference before you spend money in the wrong direction.

What we cover:

The tax of personal taste: what "I like blue" actually costs in lower conversions and slower growth
The Sally test: how Caitlin reframes taste arguments by making every decision about the customer instead of the owner
When your ideal customer should shift: why Caitlin gives clients a four-year checkpoint to re-audit who they're really serving
The Cracker Barrel lesson: why hard stop rebrands backfire and the bridge approach Caitlin uses with clients instead
Vanity metrics, reframed: what 500 followers would actually feel like if they all showed up at your house

The One Thing: Before making any brand or marketing decision, put your customer persona in front of you and walk through it with their frustrations and priorities in mind. Ask: how would they respond if I put this in front of them? It won't replace a strategic thinking partner who can call you on your crap, but it forces you out of your own head long enough to see the decision from the other side of the table.

Craig Brooks is CEO of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer and strategist. New episodes dropping soon. Follow Vibe Marketing wherever you listen to podcasts.

ADA Compliance

Craig Brooks — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Those scary ADA compliance emails from law firms aren't going away. But here's the thing: the
fixes are more straightforward than you think, and most of them will actually make your brand
work better for everyone. Craig opens this one admitting ADA compliance used to confuse and
frustrate him. Caitlin walks through what it actually means for your website, why roughly 10% of
your audience may not be seeing what you think they're seeing, and what you can do about it
this week.

What we cover:
● What ADA compliance for websites actually means (and why it's not just a legal
checkbox)
● Color blindness by the numbers: why up to 10% of your audience sees your brand
differently
● The vibration effect: what happens when two colors are too close in contrast and why it
causes headaches
● Fonts and accessibility: why choosing a cursive primary font could alienate a generation
that was never taught to read it
● Plugins vs. full audits: affordable quick fixes and when to invest in a deeper analysis

The One Thing: ADA compliance isn't just about avoiding lawsuits. It's best practice design.
Better contrast, more readable fonts, and cleaner visual hierarchy don't just serve the 10% with
visual differences. They make your brand stronger for 100% of the people who see it.

Craig Brooks is CEO of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer and strategist.
New episodes dropping soon. Follow Vibe Marketing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Branded & Marketed by AI?

Craig Brooks — Mon, 25 May 2026 06:00:00 -0400

AI can build you a logo in 30 seconds. The question is whether you should let it. Craig and
Caitlin talk through what AI is actually good at in branding and marketing, where it falls
dangerously short, and how to use it as the sidekick it's built to be instead of handing it the keys
to your entire brand. Caitlin shares her 10/80/10 framework, and Craig gets real about why even
as a power user, he doesn't trust it to do 100% of anything.

What we cover:
● AI as sidekick, not replacement: why the "automate everything" pitch should make you
nervous
● The trademark trap: why you may not be able to legally own an AI-generated logo
● Caitlin's 10/80/10 rule: be heavily involved in the first 10% and last 10%, let AI accelerate
the middle
● How feeding AI your brand strategy playbook unlocks genuinely useful outputs
● Using AI to find what clients almost said: parsing transcripts for the half-finished thoughts
that matter most

The One Thing: AI will always answer you, and it will always sell you on that answer. Your job
is to bring the 20% it can't: the human creativity, the strategic context, and the final quality
check. It's a great sidekick, but it's not the stool you want to put your whole weight on.

Craig Brooks is CEO of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer and strategist.
New episodes dropping soon. Follow Vibe Marketing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Know Your Why Before You Network

Craig Brooks — Mon, 18 May 2026 06:00:00 -0400

You joined the chamber, grabbed a few business cards, maybe went to the big expo. And then... nothing. Here's the problem: most business owners treat networking like a to-do list instead of a growth strategy. Rebekah Arthur has spent over a decade at the Seminole County Chamber and now leads it as President and CEO. She sits down with us to break down what actually works when you walk into a room full of strangers and need it to turn into something real for your business.

What We Cover:

Why your chamber can be the team you don't have yet, especially if you're running your business solo
The difference between collecting contacts and building relationships that actually generate referrals
How to pick 3-4 events that fit your schedule and personality instead of trying to show up everywhere
Community as a marketing channel: why consumers choose businesses invested in their community at a higher rate than those running ads alone
The local SEO advantage most small businesses miss: how chamber connections and local links outperform national backlinks for businesses that serve their area

The One Thing: Know your why before you show up. The most successful chamber members, whether they have two employees or two hundred, are the ones who walk in knowing exactly what they need. Not more business cards. Not a plaque for the wall. A clear goal that tells you which rooms to be in, which people to talk to, and what "success" actually looks like for the time you're investing.

Rebekah Arthur is President and CEO of the Seminole County Chamber, a five-star accredited chamber from the U.S. Chamber and Florida's Chamber of the Year in its size category. Learn more at seminolebusiness.org.

The Soul vs. The Machine

Craig Brooks — Mon, 11 May 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Your brand identity is the soul. Your marketing infrastructure is the machine. Neither one works
without the other, and most businesses are running on one while ignoring the other. Craig and
Caitlin break down what happens when you have a gorgeous brand book collecting dust in a
folder, what happens when you have a marketing engine with no strategic foundation, and how
connecting the two is what actually moves the needle at every stage of business.

What we cover:
● The real story of a client who spent $4,000 on a brand book but had zero marketing
execution
● Why handing your brand playbook to a marketer saves time, reduces decision fatigue,
and cuts costs
● How speed and capital work together: the two things that actually equal business
success
● A client case study: identifying one friction point in the customer journey led to 23%
growth
● Why the soul vs. machine framework applies whether you're a startup or doing millions
in revenue

The One Thing: If something in your business is frustrating you right now, whether it's lead
flow, client retention, or conversion rates, trace it back to the connection between your brand
foundation and your marketing execution. That gap is almost always where the answer lives.

Craig Brooks is CEO of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer and strategist.
New episodes dropping soon. Follow Vibe Marketing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Before You Ask for Capital (Karlon Johnson)

Craig Brooks — Mon, 04 May 2026 06:00:00 -0400

You can't invest in marketing, branding, or growth if your money isn't right. And most business owners don't realize how many funding doors they're closing before they even walk in. We sat down with Karlon Johnson from BBIF Capital, a Community Development Financial Institution that's been helping Florida businesses access capital and free consulting for nearly 40 years, to talk about what lenders actually look at, why most owners get turned away, and what to do about it.

What We Cover:

What a CDFI is and why the requirements are different from a bank or credit union (one year in business, credit scores as low as 600)
The free business consulting most people don't know exists, and why BBIF pairs it with every loan
Why personal credit matters more than business credit when you're trying to get funded
The income statement and balance sheet gap: what happens when you don't have them and why a bank statement isn't enough
How mixing personal and business finances quietly kills your ability to get a loan, a mortgage, or show real growth

The One Thing: Separate your personal finances from your business finances now, not when the business "gets bigger." If your personal paychecks are flowing through your business account, your financials are inflated, your tax returns look messy, and any underwriter reviewing your application is going to see red flags instead of a growing business. Get a dedicated business account, connect it to accounting software like QuickBooks, and let your numbers tell the real story.

Karlon Johnson is with BBIF Capital, Inc. He oversees lending, business consulting, and a financial literacy initiative serving business owners across Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.

Craig Brooks is CEO of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer, strategist, and entrepreneur.

Building The Brand

Craig Brooks — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 06:00:00 -0400

A beautiful website that doesn't convert is just expensive art. Craig and Caitlin get into the gap
between looking good and actually driving action, covering CTA button contrast, trust signals,
the three-second window you have to prove your site is worth someone's time, and why testing
one thing per page beats throwing every widget on your homepage at once.

What we cover:

● Why a contrasting CTA button color matters more than most business owners realize
● The grayscale hack: how to check if your design works for people who see color
differently
● Trust signals that actually move the needle: reviews, video, live chat, and knowing when
to use each one
● "World building" and why brand consistency across platforms buys you extra seconds of
attention
● The case against pop-up overload and what to do instead

The One Thing: Pull up your website on your phone right now. Can you see what you want
someone to do? If you can't, neither can they. Test one trust signal or conversion element per
page, track the results, and iterate from there.

Craig Brooks is CEO of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer and strategist.
New episodes dropping soon. Follow Vibe Marketing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Your Marketing Ally, Aerial Robinson

Craig Brooks — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Spectrum is the company you pay for internet. Spectrum Reach is the company that can put your brand in front of the exact household you're trying to reach, and it might cost less than your lunch. Craig and Caitlin sit down with Aerial Robinson, who manages over a million dollars in ad campaigns for local businesses, to find out what data-driven marketing actually looks like when you're not working with a Fortune 500 budget.

What we cover:

The $25 truth: what a 30-second Fox News commercial in your zip code actually costs (Craig guessed $8,000)
Why the biggest mistake businesses make before launching a campaign is ignoring their website infrastructure
Streaming vs. cable: how household-level targeting gets your ad in front of a business owner and skips the house next door
The "Pay It Forward" program: Spectrum Reach matches your ad spend one-to-one for new clients
Inside the Seminole County Chamber's Business Alliance Council: how 75-100 business owners show up monthly at Rock and Brews to grow together

The One Thing: You don't need a massive budget to run real, targeted marketing. What you need is a strong digital presence to send people to, a clear picture of who you're trying to reach, and the willingness to start small and local instead of spraying money across an entire metro. The infrastructure comes first. The visibility comes second.

Aerial Robinson is a media consultant and advertising account executive at Spectrum Reach, and chair of the Business Alliance Council at the Seminole County Chamber of Commerce. Find her on LinkedIn or at the BAC's monthly lunch and learn, fourth Friday of every month at Rock and Brews in Oviedo.

Craig Brooks is CEO of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer and strategist. New episodes dropping soon. Follow Vibe Marketing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Bare Bones Brand Strategy

Craig Brooks — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 06:00:00 -0400

You don't need a 50-page brand book to start a business. You need a logo, consistent colors,
consistent fonts, and the guts to go. Craig and Caitlin break down exactly what a brand
foundation looks like when you're just getting started, why messy starts are not only okay but
encouraged, and how a few smart decisions early on can save you thousands down the road.

What we cover:
● Why most founders overthink branding and underthink consistency
● The three building blocks every startup needs before anything else: logo, color palette,
typography
● How to use AI to pressure-test your color and font choices (even on a zero budget)
● The "brand thesis" concept: documenting your messy start so a strategist can hit the
ground running later
● Why trying to cram your entire business story into a logo is the most common branding
mistake

The One Thing: Even if your brand is rough around the edges, if it's consistent, you remove
friction points that cost you business. Consistency beats perfection every time.

Craig Brooks is CEO of Clarity Creative Group. Caitlin Smith is a brand designer and strategist.
New episodes dropping soon. Follow Vibe Marketing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Introducing Vibe Marketing

Craig Brooks — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 16:19:11 -0400

Welcome to Vibe Marketing, the podcast with two people who do the work every day (one in brand design, one in marketing) dig into the real questions business owners are asking, with honesty about what actually moves the needle. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.