We didn’t expect people to get so mad. The goal of the campaign was always to rage bait, but we never expected the level of backlash we ended up seeing. Looking forward, we’ll likely tone down the messaging to be more in line with what we actually believe rather than just clickbaiting..!
Luckily, the people who were mad aren’t our target audience. We target tech companies, and the vast majority of people who work at and run tech companies loved the campaign. We received 100s of messages of support and 1000s of sales meeting bookings from people in our ICP.
Finally, we learned that when something works, double down. Each time the campaign got attention, we amplified it instead of retreating. This turned critics into unwitting marketing allies and kept the momentum going far longer than we expected.
citizenjones on April 20th, 2026 at 15:04 UTC »
We didn’t expect people to get so mad. The goal of the campaign was always to rage bait, but we never expected the level of backlash we ended up seeing. Looking forward, we’ll likely tone down the messaging to be more in line with what we actually believe rather than just clickbaiting..!
Luckily, the people who were mad aren’t our target audience. We target tech companies, and the vast majority of people who work at and run tech companies loved the campaign. We received 100s of messages of support and 1000s of sales meeting bookings from people in our ICP.
Finally, we learned that when something works, double down. Each time the campaign got attention, we amplified it instead of retreating. This turned critics into unwitting marketing allies and kept the momentum going far longer than we expected.
The story behind the “Stop Hiring Humans” billboards in San Francisco | Artisan https://share.google/mW3c6lborvfEndojV
sircastor on April 20th, 2026 at 15:16 UTC »
https://preview.redd.it/gj8ck1sw3dwg1.png?width=1696&format=png&auto=webp&s=4054ef8b512f98323e8ce0627c4c4e5b928aa1cb
yourenotwavy on April 20th, 2026 at 15:40 UTC »
It's a viral outrage marketing campaign and you're doing exactly what they want by posting this.