Be Human. Behold Story. FRACTIONAL BRAND LEADERSHIP  ·  EST. CENTURY NO. 21

AI is flattening
every brand into
the same beige hum.

BEHUMAN is fractional brand and strategy leadership for companies who refuse to disappear.

21+ years 35 American Ad Awards Nike · Disney · Pixar · Coca-Cola · Ford TEDx 2013
No decks. No pitch theatre.
StoryBrand Nerd
Told stories for Twenty-one years of humans.
Nike Disney Pixar Coca-Cola Sony Music Ford Lexus Stoke Space Knife River Bale Breaker Boise Cascade Children's Miracle Network Amphenol Keytronic US Endowment Jeremiah Johnson
The Problem

Every brand sounds the same now. That's the problem opportunity.

Every product page reads the same. Every landing page promises the same outcomes. Every competitor is borrowing from the same AI that borrowed from the last guy who borrowed from the guy before him. Somewhere in there, the actual human you're trying to reach stopped listening.

01 · External

Messages fall flat.

Your copy sounds like everyone else's copy. You know it. Your team knows it. Pretending otherwise is burning budget.

02 · Internal

You know you have a story.

You just can't get anyone to stop scrolling long enough to hear it. That is an exhausting feeling. It is also a very fixable one.

03 · Philosophical

Good brands shouldn't have to shout.

The ones that last get heard. Not because they're loud — because they know exactly who they're talking to and what to say.

The Guide

I've been watching brands fight for attention for over 21 years.

I know how it feels to stare at a beautiful product, a real team, a genuinely good idea — and watch it sink under its own message. I've seen it happen at seed-stage startups and at ten-billion-dollar companies. It is almost never a talent problem.

It's almost always a story problem.

Most engagements pull in the right specialists for the job — designers, filmmakers, producers, and strategists I've worked with for years. You get the team the work needs without the agency you don't.

You are the hero of this story.
I'm the guide.
Where the work has lived

Inside Nike, Disney, Pixar, Coca-Cola, Sony Music, Ford, Lexus, Stoke Space — and others quieter than that.

Personal Credentials, Awards, and the longer story live here
Read the about →
The Plan

Three steps. No theatre.

From invisible to respected. Same framework I've used for brands you've already heard of.

1

Book a call.

30 minutes. No deck. No pitch. We find out if we're actually a fit before anyone pulls out a contract.

2

Get a custom story.

A strategy and message built around you — not yanked from a template. You'll see your brand the way a new customer would.

3

Roll it out together.

90 days of hands-on support so the story actually lives in the wild — on the site, in the deck, in the room.

What I Do

Fractional leadership with a story brain — and the team to back it.

Pick the engagement that fits where you are. Each one starts with me, and pulls in the right specialists from the BEHUMAN network when the work calls for them. Every engagement also addresses the AI question — where it earns its keep in your business, and where it should stay far from the work that should come from a human.

Offer 01

Fractional CMO
/ Brand Lead

For teams without a senior brand voice in the room. I sit at your leadership table a few days a month, own the message, and drive the plan. When the work demands it — visual identity, film, paid media, deeper research — I bring in trusted specialists I've worked with for years. Think senior partner on retainer, with a curated team behind them.

Ongoing · Monthly
Offer 02

Story Sprint

A focused 2–6 week engagement. Together we rebuild your core messaging, website copy, or launch narrative through the StoryBrand framework. I lead the strategy; the BEHUMAN network handles the production work the brief requires. You end with a messaging doc, the assets to back it, and a team that can run with all of it.

2–6 weeks · Fixed scope
Offer 03

Advisory

A monthly retainer for founders and leaders who need a brain to think out loud with. Short sessions. Real pushback. No nonsense. Just me.

Ongoing · Low-commitment

What I'm not is a full-service agency in the traditional sense. What I am is the strategic and creative layer that orchestrates the right people for each engagement. You get the work without the bloat.

What's on the line

There are two versions of the next twelve months.

Without a clear story

You quietly disappear.

  • Overlooked in a market that keeps getting noisier.
  • Marketing spend that moves metrics, not revenue.
  • Competitors with worse products winning the attention.
  • Brand quietly fades. Not dramatically. Just quietly.
With a clear story

You get remembered.

  • Customers can explain you in one sentence. Over drinks.
  • Campaigns compound instead of evaporating.
  • Your team rallies around a single narrative.
  • You stop blending in. You start getting chosen.
Invisible. Respected.
The BEHUMAN Transformation
The Anti-Agency Model

Not built like an agency. Built to work with them.

Agencies are built for production, scale, and big sustained campaigns — and they do that work brilliantly. BEHUMAN is built for the layer above that: strategy, story, and the clarifying work that makes everything an agency builds for you land harder. Most engagements either partner with the agencies you already trust, or hand off to ones we trust when the execution scales beyond us. Marketing leaders who've felt the gap between strategy and execution tend to find us useful right where the two meet.

Anti-agency in shape. Pro-collaboration in practice. Pro-result in every way that matters.

Let's talk

Tell me what you're trying to say.

Thirty minutes. No deck. No pitch theatre. We'll talk about the problem you're actually trying to solve and whether I'm the right guide for it. If yes, we keep going. If not, you'll leave with a clearer read on your story regardless.

I read every one of these myself. Usually same day.
About BEHUMAN

A small team of guides. The work starts with me.

BEHUMAN is a fractional strategist and brand-story practice, founded and led by Mitch Williams. Most engagements pull in trusted specialists from a curated network — the people I've spent two decades building real working relationships with. The team grows with the work.

Portrait of Mitch Williams with a lightning-bolt silhouette behind him.
Meet Mitch

I'm a guide, not a guru.

For 21+ years I've helped brands tell the kind of stories humans actually remember.

I didn't come up through "brand." I came up through film and software design.

Both of those crafts live or die on the same thing: empathizing with the human on the other side. If you want people to care about your product, they have to believe you're solving a problem for them. A film only works if it connects with its audience. Same rule. Two industries. One craft.

In 2011 I joined a software company specializing in Augmented Reality. Before that — in 2010 — I started my own app: Grab Another Beer. A social app for sharing the beers you drank and where you drank them, built on Foursquare's API. Untappd became the real competitor. Untappd won.

Before all of it, I studied as many film classes at Whitworth as they had available, and spent my hours on film sets — primarily working with talent (actors). That work translated directly into my later career in commercial film with Inland Film Co. Empathy, it turns out, is the craft under the craft.

Along the way I've told stories for Nike, Disney, Pixar, Coca-Cola, Sony Music, Stoke Space, Keytronic, Amphenol, Knife River, Lexus, Ford, Children's Miracle Network, and others.

I've picked up 35 American Advertising Awards. In 2013 I stood on a TEDx stage and talked about the future of Augmented Reality — more than a decade before most people had heard of it.

Here's what I actually believe:

AI didn't cause the flattening of how brands sound and how they look — but it's accelerating it. Every homepage, every pitch deck, every founder bio is starting to read like the same intern wrote all of them. The companies that can't clearly name the problem they solve for an actual human customer are going to quietly disappear. Not dramatically. Just quietly.

And I'm not anti-AI. I help businesses figure out where to deploy it to solve real problems — operations, process, data, efficiency — and where to keep it far from the work that has to come from a human. AI can solve hard business problems. It can't be your voice. The real skill is knowing the difference, and empowering humans to flourish at the edges where AI shouldn't reach.

I help them not disappear.

You are the hero of your story. I'm the guide. That's the whole operating philosophy.

Credentials, in brief
  • 21+Years across commercial film, advertising, and product marketing.
  • 35×American Advertising Awards.
  • TEDx2013 — the future of AR, a decade before it went mainstream.
  • BrandsNike, Disney, Pixar, Coca-Cola, Sony Music, Ford, Lexus, Stoke Space, Bale Breaker, CMN, Amphenol, Keytronic, Knife River, Boise Cascade, US Endowment, Jeremiah Johnson, and others.
  • FounderGrab Another Beer (2010), Weckey (2014, iPad guestbook & receptionist), and Inland Film Co (2018).
  • EduB.A. Humanities, Whitworth — theology, leadership, design, film, screenwriting.
More guides, soon

Senior strategists, designers, filmmakers, and producers — if you hate how the agency model treats brands and want to work the BEHUMAN way, tell me. The bench grows with the work.

Selected Work

Twenty-one years of humans I've told stories for.

A partial list. Across commercial film, advertising, product marketing, and brand.

Nike
Disney
Pixar
Coca-Cola
Sony Music
Ford
Lexus
Stoke Space
Myspace
Knife River
Keytronic
Amphenol
Bale Breaker
CMN Hospitals
Boise Cascade
IFG
US Endowment
+ more

Big brand budgets. Tiny founder budgets. Same question. Why should a human care?

Receipts
  • 35×American Advertising Awards
  • TEDxSpeaker, 2013 — the future of Augmented Reality
  • 2010Founder, Grab Another Beer — a social app for sharing beers, built on the Foursquare API
  • 2014Co-founder, Weckey — iPad guestbook & digital receptionist
  • 2018Co-founder, Inland Film Co
  • 21+Years across film, advertising, and product
Let's talk

Tell me what you're trying to say.

Fill out the form, or book a 30-minute call. Either one works.

I read every one of these myself. Usually same day.