Artisan Strategies

Artisan Strategies is a growth advisory firm. We specialize effectively monetizing visitors to your website. 

This means any work you've done on marketing already, just becomes more effective. CAC goes down, retention goes up, your business makes money. Sometimes it means moving from unprofitable to profitable. 

If you don't quite have the visitors you need yet, let's talk. We can help connect you with the right people for increasing acquisition first. 

We're comfortable working across industries as long as there is a purchase flow and a single item being purchased (so no ecommerce.)

Clients include:
Blip Billboards (Ad-tech)
Zight (PLG SaaS)
Mezzi (Fintech)
Millerman School (education)
and more.

Our engagements are meant to enable you over the long-term. We aren't going to give you 37 growth hacks to go implement and then walk away. Leaving you lost and with questions the first time one of your tests fails. Or worse, unsure on how to actually implement your first test. This means we only take on clients that are serious about growth and increasing revenue.

Founder & CEO

HiHello, Inc.

Navigated the initial stages of product-market fit across a broad user based. Took the company from it's current stage when I joined to three times larger in every meaningful metric within 1 year. Then built a roadmap that served the business for more than year after I left.

Head of Product, Growth, & Customer Support

Polly

• Established and executed on a long-term roadmap that delivered value to millions of users
• Delivered a full refresh of main product
• Expanded additional products and drove increased usage
• 3x’d the size of the product team to deliver on the above
• Built an A/B testing program at the company
• Hired first Growth PM and grew it to a team of 3
• Implemented refresh of pricing & packaging
• Rebuilt the entire data stack, including tracking, storage, data transformation (DBT), and analysis, as well as hired the company’s first analyst.

Head of Product & Growth

Lucid

• One of the first 50 employees and grew with the company to 700+ employees.
• Built growth team from 1 team of 5 people to 3 teams with a total of 12+ people.
• 5x’d subscriptions for our most valuable SKU in one year.
• Directly drove $XXM in revenue to the company.
• Built first experimentation program at the company that resulted in over 1,000 A/B tests run by me or my teams during my tenure.
• Owned full payment funnel from payment page experience down to processor optimization.
• Implemented support for 5 additional currencies.
• Owned and built forecast for the self-serve (PLG) part of the business.

Director of Growth

Senior Growth Manager 

Growth Manager

University Venture Fund

The University Venture Fund is the largest student run venture capital fund in the United States with $18.2M AUM
 
As a generalist fund investing $200,000 to $1M in a wide range of early- to mid-stage companies.

At the fund I consulted for other VC funds or companies, helping to do in-depth analysis on investments. This includes doing detailed research into the respective markets of each company, the management team, and service/product offered.     

On average teams of five people analyze investment potential of different companies, if the investment passes the qualificaitons of the team, they are then pitched by the team, first to fellow associates, then if passed, to an Investment Committee
          
Areas of projects personally worked on include: Social Gaming, Big Data,Construction, Medical Devices, Electric Vehicles.
           
Other VC firms personally worked with include Andreesen-Horowitz, Pelion VP, and Dolphin Capital

Senior Associate

Over a decade ago I walked into a small, unknown company. 

"We need someone who can just help us make more money. It'll be you and some engineers. Go ship whatever will make us more money. A/B tests, new features, paywalls, whatever. Just find money in the business."

I found out later, much later, that bets were placed around the company. Nobody bet we'd still be a team by the end of that year (it was February).

Well, we had a goal of $1M of cash to the business that year. A >20% increase in revenue...

We did that in the first quarter. From there, the rest is history.

Six years later, that business was well past $100M in ARR and I was about leave for my next startup adventure.

Fast forward to today, and I've discovered a powerful growth secret that most founders are still sleeping on.

But before we dive into that, let me hit you with a truth:

If you are an early-stage founder and you are not focusing on converting users as a key pillar to your business strategy... Frankly, you're leaving money on the table.

Why?

Because at the end of the day, you're not a business if people don't pay you money.

How do I know this?

At this point I've helped 
- Brand new companies get off the ground at a rocketship pace. 
- Turned companies around that we're seeing 30% year-over-year *declines* in revenue into putting up their best revenue *and* profit numbers ever.
- Taken companies that are growing at a "happy" pace to an "oh wow" pace.

Interested?

Drop me a message to learn how I can help your company to the next level! 🚀

Joseph W.

Blip

Smart advertising to develop an audience of qualified buyers.

DM to discuss self-serve or done-for-you options!

Chief Operating Officer

VP of Business Operations

Director of Strategy & Operations

Evergreen | Scale-up Business Operations

The operating framework for growth stage companies

Operator & Founder

Head of Government (from zero to one)

Developed, tested, and implemented growth strategies through new products, markets, and business partnerships in the tech, S&L, and federal sectors; spun out government vertical.

Business Development

Amazon

Category growth on amazon.ca for Electronics, Music, Camera, and Home Entertainment categories.

Sr. Marketplace Operations Manager

RLDP

United States Department of Defense

Army/Special Analytic Missions Division (SAM-D)

Army/Defense Counter Terrorism Center (DCTC)

COO @ Blip | Amazon Alum | Business Ops architect for Series A startups

A member of teams that:
✅ Reversed a $560k/mo deficit to achieve profitability at a Series A startup
✅ 3x'd revenue ($XXM) at a B2B company without increasing headcount
✅ Drove a SaaS startup's ARR from $20M👉$100M
✅ Scaled int'l SaaS and retail operations at Amazon
✅ Executed on global operations at the Pentagon

Through these experiences I learned about how to achieve predictable, profitable growth.

Now, I teach business operations frameworks for the same to 1-2 Series A/B companies per month.

Discover our options to work together at the link in my profile header.

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Every startup experiences similar operational challenges with scaling after the first 3-5 years of💲

Even for the best founders, going from startup mode to the Growth Stage is messy.

It requires a whole new operational cadence.

One that solves for:

⬇️ Inadequate focus on processes and accountability
⬇️ Lack of visibility into progress on key initiatives
⬇️ Board members probing down in the weeds
⬇️ Misalignment among the leadership team
⬇️ Lack of concert across departments
⬇️ Priorities not held in common
➡️ WEAK EXECUTION
⬆️ Frequent priority list changes
⬆️ Low confidence in hitting targets
⬆️ Unwise stewardship of funds raised
⬆️ Allowing ad hoc fires to control your day
⬆️ Instability thru macroeconomic headwinds
⬆️ Not getting expected return from your key hires

Companies fail to make the transition to Growth Stage because startup grit is simply not enough to cross over and drive scale.

You need to add process, and the right people.

This is especially true in an economic downturn.

--------------------

⬆️ If this hits close to home, let's chat.

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Please note that like you, I also have a full-time job leading execution and efficiency through a recession.

That is part of the value prop though because it means that these systems are current: tried, tested, and continually optimized as the market evolves...

...instead of just a "playbook" for miscellaneous things that have worked for someone in the past. 

While it is a huge part of the value prop, it also, however, limits my capacity for consulting so I do say no more than yes, and only work with right fits.

Learn more about the three specific ways I can help you at the link in my profile header.

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Cleared (TS/SCI)

RJ Schultz

10% sales increase, 1,496% engagement surge, 127× publicity vs media spend. Heinz asked people to draw ketchup and turned those sketches into street posters. They had a theory:

——

If people could draw your product from memory, you had claim to the category.

So they posted one simple ask: "Draw ketchup."

The hundreds submissions started rolling in.

Almost every single one looked like a Heinz bottle.

The iconic glass shape. The label. Even the specific shade of red.

This wasn't market research. It was proof.

People already believed Heinz owned ketchup. They just needed to be asked to show it.

Now here's where most brands would stop.

They'd take the data, build a deck, present it to the board, and launch a traditional campaign about being "the original" or "America's favorite."

Heinz did something completely different.

They picked real submissions and turned them into actual street posters.

Rough drawings. Imperfect lines. Zero polish.

They plastered them on billboards and streets exactly as fans drew them.

No celebrity endorsements. No massive media buy, just authentic fan art proving what focus groups never could.

And people went crazy for it.

They shared the posters because they recognized the bottles they drew. Or their friends drew. Or because it felt real in a world of overproduced advertising.

10% sales lift with zero price promotions.

1,496% spike in social engagement.

127× more publicity than their media spend.

They converted mental availability into public proof that moved product off shelves.

——

Most of us aren't Heinz. And that's fine - but it's also the point.

Heinz could run "Draw Ketchup" because they already owned the mental shelf space. They weren't chasing attention; they were measuring recognition. That's what most brands get backward.

Blip calls it a “Qualified Impression” - the 7th exposure to your brand, when the consumer is ready to make a purchase decision. 

Heinz exposed that recognition was already installed. That's why it moved sales (instead of just likes).

The lesson isn't "copy Heinz." It's "reach gets awareness; frequency gets remembered.” And you do need both in tandem.

Most marketers light budgets on fire convincing strangers who still can't recall them on the nth exposure.

Proper attention on frequency will get you remembered, and chosen.

COO @ Blip: boost brand recognition and recall with smart OOH

Burger King's Moldy Whopper scored 36% below category norms on "desire."

26% of viewers said it reduced their purchase intent. On a dashboard, it looked like a disaster.

McDonald's marketing is pure stillness. Same arches, same jingle, same promise in Times Square. When you're the category default, you don't surprise people. You reassure them.

Burger King doesn't have that luxury. Try to out-safe the safest brand in fast food, and you lose before you start.

So Burger King stopped trying.

They filmed a Whopper decomposing for 30+ days and put it on billboards. They built an AR app that sets McDonald's ads on fire (point your phone at a competitor's billboard, watch it burn, get a free Whopper). It drove app downloads and sales.

The Moldy Whopper generated 8.4 billion impressions, a 400% jump in "no artificial preservatives" awareness, tens of millions in earned media, and a 14% sales lift where it ran. Every norm it violated became a headline. Every headline became distribution their media budget couldn't buy.

The rotting burger needs you to remember "their food is real enough to rot” the next time you’re deciding between them and the Golden Arches.

-------

Most marketers confuse two things:

Attention: Did someone look at this once?

Recognition: When they're hungry later, do they remember it was us?

The first is easy to measure. The second is where profit lives.

They'd see a giant pink rectangle on the freeway. No logo. No Margot Robbie. Sometimes nothing but a tiny release date in the corner. Almost everyone who saw it knew it was Barbie.

So what in this is replicable for normal brands?

—

Hint, it's not: "Clever! We should do minimalist color-block billboards."

Because that’s copying the visible tactic while missing the invisible precondition that actually made it work:

Brand recall that came from strong, distinctive assets. Where color became a kind of coded system that helped people notice and remember. 

Distinctive assets work through repetition, not creativity alone.

Barbie's genius wasn't the pink billboard.

It was having years of "Barbie pink" drilled into people's brains before the campaign even started -- on toys, packaging, TV, and spin-offs. By 2023, that color code was already sitting in memory.

A color doing the job of copy, imagery, and logo all at once is what it looks like when a brand asset matures to the point of near-instant recall.

When Warner Bros lit up those boards, they activated recognition that already existed.

Pick one simple asset. Overcommit to it for an uncomfortably long time. Let your OOH drive repetition and recall. Let the same buyers see it enough times that it stops being "new" and starts being "you."

Most brands will never do this. Not because it's expensive, but because their creative team will tap out long before their customers' brains even notice.

Only years of consistency made this spectacle possible.

Netflix opened a portal to the Upside Down at the Empire State Building. People hunted it down, stood in front of it, and filmed themselves.

That single stunt generated more content than a month of paid ads.

BACKGROUND:

Most brands try to be everywhere instead of being from somewhere.

Netflix does it differently.

When Stranger Things 4 returned, they opened “rifts” at real landmarks. Empire State Building. Bondi Beach. Specific coordinates where the portals felt plausible.

Fans went hunting, found them, and documented everything.

For Wednesday, they sent a live-action Thing scuttling around New York sidewalks. It startled pedestrians. The kind of moment you had to be there for, but still worked perfectly on video.

With Squid Game, they placed the Young-hee doll at parks and malls. Strangers gathered to play red light green light in front of it, filming each other the whole time.

Three campaigns. Same pattern.

The location made the creative plausible. The creative gave people something to do. The phones did the rest.

——

The Netflix Method breaks down to 3 constraints:

1. Native placement

The creative only makes sense there. A portal by a landmark. A doll in a park. If you could move it anywhere, it's just another ad.

2. Simple reactivity

The ad responds to something local. Motion, weather, time of day. People just film it.

3. A role for the passer-by

There's something to do. Find it, stand in it, play with it. You're not watching the ad. You're in it.

——

LESSON:

Netflix didn't win OOH by outspending everyone.

They won by enforcing those three constraints.

You don't need portals at the Empire State Building to run this playbook.

You need a few good spots and several weeks.

Pick a location where your creative makes sense. Write one line that name-checks the street or references something only locals would know.

Add one reactive element. Weather. Time of day. The home team's score.

Give people something to film. A marked spot to stand in. A question they answer. A moment they're part of.

Small brands with small budgets can turn commuters into their content team if they stop trying to be everywhere and commit to being from somewhere.

Context does half the work. The audience does the rest.

"User-generated content feels cheap."

If Apple had believed that in 2015, they would have hired professional photographers and called it a day. Instead, they inverted the whole thing.

User photos didn't endorse Apple. Apple endorsed users, and that status flip changed how 10,000 billboards read in public.

The conventional playbook says user content is fine for social media. Maybe a testimonial page. But a global billboard campaign? That demands professionals.

And Apple ignored all of it.

They handed phones to 162 people - amateurs and pros - curated their work, and turned it into more than 10,000 installations, without explaining why these photos mattered.

Just the work, elevated to the biggest canvas possible.

Tor Myhren, who leads Apple's marketing communications, has said why they love outdoor: it cuts through a fast, fractured digital culture. And at that scale, with that density, the campaign stopped feeling like advertising. It felt like celebration.

The genius wasn't the photography, but rather the inversion.

Most user content is a brand borrowing your credibility. ‘Shot on iPhone’ was Apple lending you theirs.

When your photo showed up on a billboard in your city, it wasn't you endorsing the phone. It was Apple saying your work deserved the biggest wall they could buy.

The campaign felt like a celebration - almost civic art.

So the next time someone says user content can't carry a premium brand campaign, remember that 10,000 billboards proved otherwise.

Most billboards brag about the product. Canva's billboards brag about the pain. "Make the logo bigger." "16x9 was supposed to be 9x16." The feature is the punchline, not the headline. And that's the trick.

Here's how to apply it:

1. Saturate one hub

Most campaigns try to graze as many people as possible once. Canva did the opposite. Multiple billboards in one corridor. Same commuters passing them every single day. Research shows attitudes peak around 8-10 exposures. Recognition switches on somewhere around the 7th impression. One saturated hub beats ten cities sprinkled.

2. Lead with the pain

Every Canva board freezes a moment their ICP has actually lived through. The "oh no" moment. The Slack fire drill. The sweaty palms. Every designer knows what "make the logo bigger" feels like.

3. Make the feature the punchline

Canva bolted a real bike to a billboard to sell "drag and drop almost anything." Framed text to appear sideways to sell Magic Resize. Each ad becomes a product demo in physical space.

4. Measure activation

You won't get perfect attribution, but you can get a useful signal. Create a url unique to your OOH ads. Of compare activation rate versus a control region with no OOH. Look for higher activation per signup because people hitting your site already know what you solve.


TAKEAWAY

Your ICP’s at-work Inside jokes are a filter.

Use them to become the obvious answer for people who already feel the problem every week.

Start with one uncomfortable question:

What are the three lines your users joke about on Slack that you're too nervous to put on a billboard?

Write those down.

taplio

The Battle

Joseph W.

RJ Schultz

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taplio

The Battle

Joseph W.

RJ Schultz

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}RJ Schultz's LinkedIn Performance

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