Blackout Signs: The Art of Old-Fashioned Advertising
Small-town metal man Jay Gordon lights up main streets and music festivals with hand-made neon signs, built in a 1930s barn outside Austin.
Senior Brand Strategist, Antique Archaeology
American Pickers gave Mike Wolfe a national television audience on HISTORY. As Senior Brand Strategist for Antique Archaeology, I turned that audience into an owned brand ecosystem that could publish, sell, launch destinations, and mobilize people between episodes.
1. The Business Opportunity
Mike had spent nearly twenty-five years on the back roads before any of it was on camera: staying in small-town guesthouses, meeting makers and craftspeople, showing up for local events, eating at the diner nobody outside the county had heard of. The opportunity was building a brand that could tell that story, a USA-made lifestyle brand rooted in ground Mike had already covered, running alongside the show's own merchandise, not instead of it.
This is the American Pickers you already know. What's next is what happened after the cameras left.
The business that existed before the audience.
The show created reach. It didn't create ownership.
The philosophy became a brand people could wear, read, and follow.
The brand became a place people could experience.
My work connected the ecosystem: brand voice, editorial, campaigns, and audience development, moving a combined 2M+ social following from watching to reading, shopping, and visiting.
2. The System I Built
The strategic challenge was using the show's reach without making every brand feel like television merchandise. I developed a distinct voice for Two Lanes, built an original editorial operation, grew the email audience, and coordinated campaigns around moments when viewer interest was highest. Editorial created continuity between episodes; email converted attention into a direct relationship; commerce and hospitality gave the audience ways to participate in the story.
"Less People. More Life."
Inspired by 25 years of exploring and rediscovering the often forgotten wonders found only on the back roads, Two Lanes is Mike Wolfe's offering of stories and connections, apparel and accessories . . . carefully chosen items that speak of living mindfully and with purpose. He believes there is a place in all of us that longs for authenticity and for the day we decide to carve our own path and commit to our own journey.
Life on two lanes is personal, passionate and open-minded, and traveling that road requires only a conscious choice to stay on it. Every day. Two Lanes. From Mike Wolfe. Made in America.
This became the standard every blog post, email, and product description had to sound like.
Here's what that looked like in practice.
In one episode, Mike Wolfe, Frank Fritz, and Danielle Colby found and helped preserve Aerosmith's original pre-fame tour van. HISTORY created the moment.
I built the campaign around it: coordinating promotion with HISTORY around the episode and video release, then extending the story through email, social content, and original editorial on Antique Archaeology's and Two Lanes' owned channels, before the attention faded.
That meant coordinating directly with HISTORY on episode timing, with partner brands like State Farm and Polaroid on co-branded campaigns, and with Mike's PR team on national press opportunities.
The same pattern repeated every season: each episode landed on an audience a little warmer than the one before it.
01
Episode airs
02
Campaign deploys
03
Viewer converts
04
Editorial sustains interest
05
Next episode, warmer audience
3. Three Examples of the System at Work
The Two Lanes Blog
American Pickers had time for the find, not the twenty-five years of back-road history behind it. I built the Two Lanes Blog to hold that larger story: original reporting on bladesmiths, oar makers, sign painters, forgotten towns, and working musicians, sourced and written by me start to finish.
The blog was also how I sold Two Lanes' own product line: apparel, hats, a Deneen Pottery mug, cedar soap from the Fury Bros. I wrote the stories behind the people who made them, timed the posts to episodes where Mike wore the product on camera, and built the holiday email pushes around it.
Blackout Signs: The Art of Old-Fashioned Advertising
Small-town metal man Jay Gordon lights up main streets and music festivals with hand-made neon signs, built in a 1930s barn outside Austin.
WallDogs: The Artists Behind Ghost Signs
A nearly extinct sign-painting tradition, kept visible one hand-lettered wall at a time.
The Language of Love: Vespas Restored in an Iowa Alley
A restorer's devotion to vintage Italian Vespas, told through the machines he's brought back to life.
Hobbit-Style Gully Huts, Forest Gully Farms
Earth-sheltered guest houses built into a hillside, for travelers after something other than a chain hotel.
A Midwest supper-club tradition, roadside sign and all, covered as its own piece of Americana.
The Hitchhikers of the Mississippi
Life aboard a working barge on the fog-covered Mississippi, a back-road story that happens on the water instead.
Three Generations of Passion, One Historic Building
A historic Main Street building's ownership, passed through three generations, covered as preservation rather than real estate.
Bishop Gunn: Rock 'n' Roll Revitalized
Regional music culture profiled the way Two Lanes covered everything else: person first.
Vinsetta Garage: Back-Road History, Not Retail Copy
A historic garage's second life, written as a destination story instead of sponsored content.
Preserve Route 66
Preservation was already core to Two Lanes' identity, but it needed a way to turn belief into action.
I built the messaging strategy and integrated campaign connecting co-branded product, press, and a public petition, so buying something and taking a stand were the same decision.
$34K+ raised · 61K+ signatures
Two Lanes Guesthouse
Two Lanes had been telling its philosophy in writing for years. The opportunity was making it a place people could actually stay in.
I developed the brand from scratch: positioning, voice, launch messaging, and the audience strategy that carried it across email, social, and direct booking.
20K+ followers, from zero
4. Results and Ownership
What I owned
Includes national bylines ghostwritten for Mike Wolfe: Country Living and House Beautiful.
What This Work Proves
This work shows how I approach audience growth: identify what the larger platform cannot provide, build an owned brand around that opportunity, and create the editorial and campaign system that turns recognition into an ongoing customer relationship.
Sarah Buckholtz · Senior Brand Strategist, Antique Archaeology · 2015–2022