TJ Larson
My career has been defined by leading high-impact teams, executing go-to-market (GTM) strategies, and driving customer engagement through creative and data-driven solutions. Who I am has been defined by creating meaningful human connections within demanding work environments.
With a background spanning marketing, product strategy, engineering, and creative work I bring a unique blend of thinking. My technical expertise, business acumen, and leadership experience combine to help organizations grow and innovate.
The special projects below are intended to give you extra insight on how I think of solutions to problems.
the Passport Program
Boosting Customer Engagement
At trade shows, our new product launches always drew strong engagement, but the same couldn’t be said for our other booth demos. While the latest signal generator had a constant crowd, attendees often skipped over other valuable demos. These face-to-face interactions weren’t just about showing off our tech—they were key opportunities to capture potential client information and set up off-site, NDA-protected demos.
To spread the love across all demos, I implemented the Keysight Passport Program. Attendees received a branded passport, and to enter a giveaway, they needed three stamps: one from the signal generator booth and two from any other demo station. This simple gamification strategy encouraged attendees to explore more of what we had to offer.
But the real magic happened when we refined what the "prize" actually was. It turns out that high-value, exclusive experiences—not expensive swag—drove the best engagement. Attendees were more willing to share accurate contact details when the reward was access to 1:1 NDA conversations, exclusive hands-on training, or extended demo unit trials in their own lab. These incentives didn’t just bring in names—they put us in direct contact with decision-makers at target companies, accelerating deals and strengthening marketing’s connection to the sales pipeline.
What’s Humidity?
Driving Growth
When Texas Instruments set out to achieve exponential growth in its humidity sensor portfolio, I was selected—alongside two colleagues—to lead the initiative. While my counterparts focused on application support and roadmap development, I spearheaded the marketing strategy to expand our serviceable market beyond its traditional applications. The key to growth? Reframing the product’s perceived limitations as unique strengths.
At the time, AI was still in its early stages, but self-diagnostics was becoming a buzzword. I saw an opportunity to position our sensors as a critical tool for predictive maintenance. By leveraging SEO and content marketing, I built messaging around repeatable errors—an area where humidity sensors could add unexpected value. Our team compiled a list of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) commonly used in PCB manufacturing, demonstrating how these substances could affect sensor accuracy in predictable ways. This insight gave customers a powerful diagnostic tool, allowing them to preemptively assess product reliability based on environmental exposure.
We also explored long-term self-diagnostics for waterproof devices. While IP ratings set industry standards, they don’t account for real-world conditions. A humidity sensor inside a sealed device could detect moisture ingress over time, signaling: a manufacturing defect in the seal, damage during shipping, or tampering by the end-user.
This shift in positioning—from a sensor component to a real-time diagnostic tool—helped us break into new markets and expand adoption. But more importantly, it sparked a cultural shift within our team. By encouraging engineers and marketers to think creatively about product applications, we created a self-sustaining cycle of innovation—one that fueled continuous growth far beyond our initial goals.
Brainiac Trivia
Re-engaging Dormant Customers
When engineers are passionate about something, they love to test their knowledge, challenge assumptions, and share what they know. That’s what inspired Brainiac Trivia—a global, interactive way to engage engineers while also driving business objectives.
The goal started simple: help engineers learn more about our product catalog in a way that didn’t feel like work. At the same time, I wanted to create a platform where long-time engineers (20+ years at the company) could share interesting facts about test and measurement. But as I developed the idea, it quickly became clear that this could solve an even bigger problem—reactivating dormant web users who had previously engaged with our site but dropped off.
At the same time I was developing this idea, our VP of Marketing was looking for a way to bring back lapsed users—engineers who had once been active on our site but had stopped engaging. Trivia turned out to be the perfect tool for this because: It was easy to roll out and sustain globally, Engineers already loved testing their knowledge (proven through field experience), It created a fun, low-pressure interaction—not just another sales pitch.
One of the biggest drivers of engagement was a counterintuitive insight: engineers love finding and correcting errors. By subtly including intentional mistakes in some of the trivia questions, we triggered an instinct engineers have—to point out inaccuracies.
I arrived at this insight through a data-driven approach:
Real-world field experience as a Field Application Engineer showed me that engineers naturally love sharing knowledge and debating details.
Trivia night observations at local bars confirmed that many engineers regularly attended and actively participated in trivia events.
Web team insights showed that engineers frequently emailed in corrections when they found errors in online technical content.
Web analyst data helped us define baseline behaviors for active users, allowing us to measure engagement shifts.
Top-viewed products by dormant users influenced trivia topics to align with their previous interests.
Reddit & Twitter research helped us integrate pop culture references to make the experience more engaging.
The results exceeded expectations: 30% of inactive users became active again after engaging with Brainiac Trivia. More importantly, this wasn’t just surface-level engagement—a significant portion of those reactivated users went on to make purchases within the first year.
This project reinforced something I strongly believe: people disengage when you only sell to them, but they stick around when you create real interactions. In a web-first experience, the human element is already diminished, so leaving users with something thought-provoking—something that sparks curiosity—makes all the difference.