STOP HIRING HUMANS was never about you.

Artisan lit a match and threw it into the most ad-saturated, AI-exhausted city in the world. A billboard in San Francisco scrawled with “Stop Hiring Humans” (and beautifully, a very human spelling mistake), paired with deadpan AI faces. It’s the kind of thing you screenshot and rage-tweet. Some called it dystopian. Some called it genius. Most missed the point. Cue: $2 million in ARR.

The execution was sharp. You just didn’t like the message.
Artisan didn’t fumble this. They nailed the classic playbook:

✔ Clear enemy (status quo)
✔ Short, punchy copy (5 words, maximum impact)
✔ Timed to a relevant industry moment (TechCrunch Disrupt)
✔ Multi-channel extension (Reddit, social seeding, earned press)
✔ Visual consistency (humanlike Ava, eerie purple optimism)

Was it rage bait? Yes.
Was it intentional? Absolutely.
Did you bite? Probably.

No specs. No demos. No generic AI spiel. Just provocation with a plan. And when people came for them, they didn’t run, they doubled down. They posted their own TechCrunch booth to Reddit’s mildly infuriating thread. They memed themselves. They steered the outrage into more virality. And the haters? Mostly people who’d never buy the product anyway.
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We love innovation, until it comes from a start-up

So why are we mad at Artisan, but not Google? Veo 3 drops. Full cinematic shots. Emotional music. Studio-quality video at scale and creepy character controls. Artisan says one provocative thing and we drag them because they’re going to ‘take our jobs’. Be serious.

Why the bias? Well, Google feels safe. Artisan feels cocky. But in reality, Big Tech slides AI into your calendar, inbox, docs, ads, and no one bats an eye. A seed-stage startup says it out loud and everybody loses their shit.
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Regardless of your views, it worked.

Millions of impressions. $2M in ARR. Permanent name recognition with founders, marketers and VCs within five miles of any airport. The message? Maybe dystopian. The execution? Textbook. While everyone else argued about ethics and job losses, Artisan’s brand team wrote a blog post about it. Fair play... Read it here.

*Note: We’ve reached a strange point in cultural conversation. Everyone wants to be seen hating on AI, but no one’s turning down the benefits. The same people posting threads about the death of creative jobs are also testing GPT-5 and using self-checkout at Tescos. In 2024 alone an estimated 170,000 retail jobs were lost in the UK, with self-checkout machines being a significant factor. Why aren’t people raging about that?

And the irony is…
Artisan’s billboard said “Stop Hiring Humans.”
Their website says “We’re hiring across all departments.”
Their blog insists “We love humans.”
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Their people and culture page? We need humans who are:
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✔ Willing to work nights and weekends.
✔ Push the boundaries of what’s possible.
✔ Take extremely direct feedback without being offended.

Their mission is to ‘create an ecosystem where humans and artisans work together in symbiosis.’ That’s where it gets a bit deep for me, but nonetheless, the irony amplifies the campaign.
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Guess how they did it

The creative, the backlash, memes, press, all of it only works because the brand underneath it was clear, confident, and differentiated. You can’t just slap “Stop Hiring Humans” on a billboard and hope for the best. Without the right positioning, messaging and brand, it would’ve flopped.
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Artisan had done the work. They knew the space they were playing in. They knew what they were disrupting. And they committed to being unapologetic, provocative, and dead serious about the future of work (even if they’re laughing while they say it).