Mitch Branstetter

Copywriter and creative leader who helps brands sound like they have a pulse. Makes complex products and services easier to understand and harder to forget. Skilled at translating strategy into ideas that scale across all media and tie directly to business KPIs. Builds and trains AI tools to streamline processes and push the work. Made two Fortune 500 CEOs cry in public.

Principal Copywriter at Home Instead (Honor) (2025-01 – Present)

• Shaped brand voice and content strategy for Home Instead, the world's largest in-home care company.
• Introduced a new brand messaging framework replacing generic care-industry language with person-centered storytelling across web, email, digital, social, SEO, and CRM programs.
• Directed design leads, motion designers, and videographers on growth campaigns for social, digital, outdoor, and direct response.
• Built a custom AI tool to speak in the brand's voice, improving the consistency of messaging across marketing and design teams.

Consultant, AI Maker, Founder (Freelance) at Chronicle (2024-05 – Present)

• Founded an AI development consultancy to explore the intersection of AI and content design.
• Created Timbre, a tool that generates brand voice and tone guidelines from a company's existing content and keeps them current as the brand evolves.
• Developed an editorial tool called The Copy Desk that flags AI writing patterns in copy and rewrites it to match a brand’s voice.
• Trained and evaluated LLMs against custom rubrics, tuned prompts, defined model behaviors, then documented the patterns so anyone could apply them.

Associate Creative Director, Copy at Varsity Tutors (Nerdy) (2018-05 – 2024-04)

• Led brand voice and content strategy during the company's highest growth period and contributed directly to Nerdy's $1.7B IPO.
• Built and maintained the company's brand tone and style guide, ensuring a consistent voice across brand, product, and content writing throughout the organization.
• Wrote and engineered a customizable collateral system for 100+ unique audiences. Folded into an existing nurture program, it lifted conversion by more than 20%.
• Launched an e-commerce site for a state-funded learning support product, owning content and UX design and delivering a 12% add-to-cart rate and 4% sales conversion.
• Overhauled a struggling CRM email program, cutting the unsubscribe rate by 60%, from 0.5% to 0.2%, and lifting new product trials.

Creative Director at HackerAgency (2013-12 – 2017-12)

• Managed creative teams and wrote copy for clients including Bing, Progressive, SoFi, AT&T, and Uber. Led creative for new business projects, winning some of the agency's most significant accounts.
• Wrote and managed lifecycle campaigns for Bing Ads that used personalized content and A/B copy testing to lift conversion by 122% and click-to-open rates by 89%.
• Overhauled Progressive's CRM email program, lifting open rates by 25% and click-through rates by 40%.
• Headed creative for SoFi’s direct marketing programs, beating controls for the student loan refinance segment and achieving a 5% response rate for the personal loan segment.
• Created a digital and direct-response driver-recruitment campaign for Uber that doubled conversion.

Associate Creative Director, Copy at Rivet (FCB) (2008-10 – 2013-12)

• Led creative at a top Chicago agency, connecting global brands like Microsoft, Levi's, Boy Scouts, and Casio with their audiences across broadcast, print, experiential, and out-of-home.
• Elevated NIPSCO from last place to No. 2 in J.D. Power rankings through an integrated rebrand campaign that shifted customer perception from “evil power company” to “eco-minded neighbor.”
• Directed a rebrand for Boy Scouts of America, wrote the brand guidelines, and expanded an inherited tagline into a national recruitment campaign that sold kids on the adventure and parents on the values.
• Concepted and wrote a multi-format launch for Casio Cameras that included national print and digital campaigns, a CES monorail station takeover, and an 11-panel billboard in Times Square.
• Initiated a Microsoft Education partnership with VH1 that grew awareness for the Shape the Future program, exceeding the client's goal by more than 20%.

BA in Communication with a concentration in Advertising Writing – Purdue University