Go Viral with Customers Like a Granola PMM

If you spent any time on Twitter or LinkedIn in December 2025, you probably saw exactly what we’re about to talk about. Feeds were full of year-in-review posts, screenshots, swipe cards, and funny little stats about how people worked, what they shipped, and what they obsessed over all year. You know the format. Spotify Wrapped made it famous. Plenty of brands have tried to copy it since. Some pulled it off. Some really, really didn’t.

Granola was one of the ones that got it right. Their “Crunched” campaign was scrappy, AI-powered, deeply shareable, and seemed to spread across tech workers on Twitter and LinkedIn overnight. It generated millions of organic impressions and changed how people talked about the product in the process. In this episode, I sat down with Jack Cully, part of the team behind Granola, the AI meeting notes tool people genuinely love using. He walked us through how they built Granola Crunched, and why it worked so well.

Now a founding marketer at a startup, Jack is representing the Granola team here as an honorary product marketer because this campaign is such a strong example of using customer insight and product capability in a genuinely clever way. Before Granola, Jack was one of the earliest marketers at Monzo, the app-based bank that helped redefine modern FinTech branding in the UK. He has also led a brand refresh at every company he’s worked at, which tells you he’s not exactly afraid of rethinking the story from the ground up. 

Start With a Product People Already Feel Something About

Granola had one big advantage going into this campaign. The product already solved a real, relatable problem. It helped people turn messy meeting notes into organised summaries without forcing them to spend the whole meeting typing like their life depended on it.

That matters because viral campaigns work better when they amplify something users already value. Granola did not need to invent a fake emotional hook. The product already sat close to people’s daily work, which meant the campaign could build on real behavior, real habits, and real moments people recognized in themselves.

Why “Crunched” Worked

Jack walked through how the team built “Granola Crunched” as a year-in-review style experience. The idea was not to copy Spotify Wrapped for the sake of it. It was to take a familiar format and use Granola’s meeting data in a way that felt specific to the product and genuinely fun for users.

The campaign surfaced things like people’s most-used phrases, favorite collaborators, and patterns in how they worked. It was funny, a little exposing in the best way, and highly shareable. The reason it landed is that it gave users a version of themselves they wanted to react to. That is a much stronger engine for sharing than a brand simply asking for attention.

Personal, Useful, and Still Privacy-First

One of the smartest parts of the campaign was that it felt personal without crossing the line into creepy. That balance is hard. Jack talked about how carefully the team thought about privacy while still making the output feel tailored and emotionally resonant.

That is the sweet spot. If a campaign uses customer data, it has to feel like a gift, not surveillance. Granola managed to make the experience feel playful and useful, which is exactly why people leaned in instead of backing away.

Launch Timing and Social Momentum Matter

Granola also did the operational side well. The campaign launched on a Tuesday at 8:00 AM UK time, which gave it room to build momentum in one market before naturally rolling into another. That kind of timing sounds small, but it matters when you are trying to create a wave instead of a blip.

Jack also took personal ownership of social engagement during the launch. That meant replies felt human, fast, and in tune with the moment. When a campaign starts moving, that responsiveness helps turn interest into energy.

The Bigger Win Was Brand Perception

“Crunched” did more than generate shares. It changed how people thought about Granola. The campaign reportedly drove a 25 percent share rate, helped with new user acquisition, and pushed the brand beyond “useful meeting notes tool” into something more emotionally sticky.

That shift matters. The strongest campaigns do not just create attention, but deepen the relationship between the user and the product. Granola became not just a tool people used, but a brand that seemed to understand how they worked.

Messaging Critique: Lovable

We closed the episode with a messaging critique of Lovable and their campaign line, “Some ideas are too loud to ignore.” It is a strong line. Creative, emotionally charged, and clearly aimed at makers and builders who feel a constant pull to bring ideas to life.

Jack liked the ambition and the out-of-home execution, but also pointed to an opportunity. If the campaign is about ideas being too loud to ignore, there is room to bring that concept into the real world in a bigger, more tangible way. Something street-level, interactive, or unexpected could push the idea even further and make the message feel less like a line and more like an experience.

What Granola got right was not just the format. It was the thinking underneath it. They understood what users already valued, found a way to reflect that back in a funny and highly shareable format, and executed it with enough care that it felt personal rather than performative.

That is the real lesson from Jack’s playbook. Strong campaigns do not come from chasing trends for the sake of it. They come from understanding your product deeply, knowing what your customers will actually see themselves in, and building something that feels both useful and worth talking about. That is how you create a campaign people do not just notice, but want to share.

LINKS:

Messaging Critique: https://lovable.dev/ 

Connect with Jack:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcully 

Connect with Elle:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/

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