Mike Brenner

Seasoned advertising and marketing creative with agency and in-house experience. Professional background as both a designer and copywriter, with emphasis on honing copy and creative strategy. Spent time teaching advertising, and then studied coaching skills, becoming an enthusiastic, empathetic team lead. Particular expertise in video creation, production, and external agency direction.

Square, San Francisco, CA

Group Creative Director  5/2020 – 3/2022

Managed the creative work and career growth of two cross-functional teams of art directors, copywriters, designers, production designers, and design technologists. Partnered closely with program managers, production coordinators, producers, product designers, and product marketing managers. Polished and approved creative briefs for every marketing initiative.

• Grew Customers and Point of Sale team from one to thirteen creatives and Developers & Partnerships team from one to three creatives as company’s creative organization decentralized. Employee satisfaction scores grew to 95% while many other teams’ scores suffered due to significant operational change.
• Drove creative strategy and production of the company’s international developers conference with year-over-year increases in attendance and engagement.
• Built hyper-targeted 360 awareness and conversion campaigns for healthcare service providers, professional service providers, and software developers. Ensuring creative was relatable and media buys were focused, establishing the right campaign visibility, resulting in increased acquisition.
• Oversaw creative for the product marketing of the main Square Point of Sale app and associated first-party products (Invoices, Marketing, etc.) and third-party integrations. Channels included video (broadcast and online), web, social, banners, print, outdoor, experiential, and e-mail.
• Refined and improved the international launch process for these SAAS solutions in Ireland, France, and Spain, while managing product updates and improvements in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the United States. 

Provided creative and professional direction and grew a centralized copy team from five to eleven copywriters and copy editors, responsible for brand and product marketing for the entire ecosystem of Square and Caviar products.

• Directed new software and hardware product launch campaigns. Collaborated with PMMs defining most persuasive value propositions and ensuring consistent creative messaging across all campaigns.
• Contributed to building successful awareness campaigns for existing products needing more traction.
• Built tutorial, overview, and testimonial video creation process at scale and trained the rest of the copy team, dramatically reducing the number of service center calls.
• Taught junior copywriters the Square voice, and provided guidance through web and lifecycle email communications to create a better brand experience for sellers.

Individual contributor copywriter for all Square products.

• Concepted and wrote copy for fully integrated brand and product campaigns in addition to simple one-off jobs, like hardware packaging, getting started guides, and feature announcement emails.
• Led creative on three year-long campaigns, one of which ran for two with unbeatable creative in data-based marketing test after test.
• At one point or another, was the leading copy go-to for every single Square product, including Square Capital, Invoices, Appointments, Payments, Point of Sale, Developers, and Square for Restaurants.

Senior Copywriter

Delivered creative concepting, copywriting, and production for full-service advertising agency with art director partner. Made visually arresting spots and immersive microsites. Clients included: American Licorice, AOL, Bandai, Bethesda Softworks, Boost Mobile, Dreamworks (M-Go Streaming), ExpressJet Airlines, Lexus, OnLive, Plastic Logic, Scion, Sony, TiVo, Toyota, Yahoo. Helped make Scion the most successful car brand launch in history.

Academy of Art University, San Francisco, CA 6/2007 - 6/2011

Instructor

Taught advanced students how to turn print ideas into fleshed out, integrated campaigns. Students were recognized by the One Show, Addys, OpenAd, Art Directors’ Club, and Design and Art Direction organizations.

ADDITIONAL RELEVANT EXPERIENCE

Art Direction Intern, Publicis Dialog, San Francisco, CA

Designed for print and web. Clients included: Bermuda Department of Tourism, Hewlett Packard, Sprint, WebEx.

Production Manager, Designer, Writer, The Santa Barbara Independent, Santa Barbara, CA

Managed five-person ad production office for weekly newspaper. Hired and trained sometimes completely novice staff, provided advertising and marketing collateral design direction, and mastered pre-press preparation. Created process to convert the paper from paste-up to digital production. Wrote art and lifestyle features.

Musician, Sicker than Others, Romperoom, Hybrid Soul, Santa Barbara, CA

Played bass with three independent bands over fifteen great years. Self-taught design software for merch and flyers, practiced team building, and now audio production experience is extremely helpful in editing rooms.

Master of Fine Art, Advertising, Academy of Art University, San Francisco, CA

Bachelor of Art, English, Psychology, University of California at Santa Barbara