Product Marketing Adventures

Write Your Product Narrative Like a Zapier PMM

Your company has outgrown the thing it is known for, but the market has not caught up yet. New launches land like add-ons instead of the next chapter, and suddenly you are trying to scale a bigger story with old positioning. In this episode, we talk about what it actually takes to evolve brand perception as your product expands. Wade Burrell joins me to break it down. Wade has 15 years of experience across product, go-to-market, and growth, with time at Worldpay, Square, and Intuit Mailchimp. He led SMS expansion across 37 countries and helped shift Mailchimp from being seen as an email tool to being understood as a multi-channel marketing platform. Today, he is at Zapier, leading product marketing for critical infrastructure in the AI era. A big part of our conversation focuses on Wade’s work repositioning Mailchimp’s SMS product. It started as a standalone MVP and was initially treated as useful but optional. Wade shares how they worked to shift that perception, connect SMS to the broader platform story, and make it feel like a strategic priority instead of a bolt-on. Wade also walks through a practical narrative playbook for PMMs, including how to audit your existing platform assets, run open-ended customer research, bring insights into roadmap discussions, and sharpen positioning through real constraints. Plus, we close with a messaging critique of Cursor and where their story could expand beyond developers to speak to larger engineering organizations. Key Takeaways * Platform expansion creates narrative lag if your positioning does not evolve with the product * New products need to feel like the next chapter, not a bolt-on * Strong narrative shifts start with an audit of what you already own and can credibly claim * Open-ended customer research helps you find the gaps that matter, not the story you want to tell * Sales feedback is a fast reality check on whether positioning holds up in the real world * Great messaging can still get sharper by building a second layer for new decision-makers LINKS Messaging Critique (Cursor): https://cursor.com/ [https://cursor.com/]   Connect with Wade: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wadeburrell [https://www.linkedin.com/in/wadeburrell]  Connect with Elle: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/]  Website: https://www.productmarketingadventures.com/ [https://www.productmarketingadventures.com/]

Boost Product Adoption Like A GoFundMe Pro PMM

Most adoption problems are not product problems. They are behavior change problems. In this episode, we dig into status quo bias and why customers often stick with what they know, even when your product is clearly better. If you have ever struggled to get users to switch, upgrade, or adopt a new workflow, this will feel very familiar. Keith Blazek joins me to break down how to drive adoption at scale across an entire customer base. Keith has spent over 13 years driving growth across SaaS and financial services in both B2B and B2C, and he helped scale Classy, now GoFundMe Pro, through major growth and transformation. During that time, the platform grew from $1B to $2.6B in annual nonprofit donation volume. Keith walks through his adoption playbook, starting with the step most teams skip. The audit. What assets and channels do you actually have, where does the product fit in the lifecycle, and what is really happening in onboarding and usage. From there, he explains how he builds a repeatable system rather than relying on one big campaign. We also get into practical segmentation, targeting, and positioning for buying committees, plus his Gain, Logic, Fear framework for getting different stakeholders on board without changing the core message. And in the messaging critique segment, Keith audits Wealthfront and shares why specificity and clarity matter even more when you are asking people to change. LINKS Messaging Critique: https://www.wealthfront.com [https://www.wealthfront.com]  Connect with Keith:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-blazek/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-blazek/]  Connect with Elle: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/]  Website: https://www.productmarketingadventures.com/ [https://www.productmarketingadventures.com/]

Leverage Your Community Like An Expedia PMM

Everyone seems to be talking about community right now, but what does it actually take to build one that people want to be part of? In this episode, Cara Gravett joins us to unpack why community matters more than ever in a landscape full of polished, AI-generated noise, and why belonging can be far more powerful than attention. Cara brings deep experience from Expedia, where she worked across product, partners, and revenue, helping shape growth in complex B2B ecosystems. She now advises companies on how to make product marketing more strategic, and also runs Between Launches, a community built for product marketers to learn from one another and grow together. In our conversation, we explore the difference between an audience and a true community, why smaller and more intentional groups are often more effective, and what Expedia’s Travel Agent Affiliate Program can teach us about building something genuinely useful. Cara also shares a practical lens for approaching community strategy without the fluff. We also touch on where AI can support community building, where it falls short, and why human connection still sits at the centre of it all. Plus, in the messaging critique segment, Cara breaks down Maven Clinic’s positioning and shares a smart reminder about the value of sharper audience focus. LINKS Messaging Critique: https://www.mavenclinic.com/ [https://www.mavenclinic.com/]  Connect with Cara:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cara-gravett/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/cara-gravett/]   Connect with Elle: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/]  Website: https://www.productmarketingadventures.com/ [https://www.productmarketingadventures.com/]

Go Viral with Customers Like a Granola PMM

If you spent any time on Twitter or LinkedIn in December 2025, you probably saw Granola Crunched everywhere. In this episode, Jack Cully joins me to break down how Granola turned a familiar year-in-review format into a deeply shareable campaign that spread fast across tech workers and generated millions of organic impressions. Jack is part of the team behind Granola, the AI meeting notes tool people genuinely love using, and before that he was one of the earliest marketers at Monzo, helping shape one of the most recognisable brands in UK FinTech. Jack shares why the campaign worked so well, starting with the fact that Granola already solved a real problem people cared about. Instead of forcing a trend onto the product, the team used real meeting data to create something funny, personal, and instantly recognisable. We get into how they built the experience, why it felt so shareable, and what made users want to post it rather than just look at it. We also talk about the details that made the campaign land. That includes how Granola balanced personalization with privacy, why launch timing mattered, and how hands-on social engagement helped turn momentum into something much bigger. More importantly, we unpack how the campaign shifted brand perception, moving Granola beyond a useful tool and into something people felt understood their working lives. We close with a messaging critique of Lovable and their line, “Some ideas are too loud to ignore,” including where the campaign is strong and where it could go further.  The bigger takeaway from the episode is simple: the best campaigns do not come from chasing trends. They come from knowing your product, knowing your users, and building something people genuinely want to share. Key Takeaways * Viral campaigns work best when they amplify something users already value * Personalisation only works when it feels useful, not invasive * Familiar formats can still feel fresh when they are tightly tied to the product * Launch timing and active engagement can make a big difference to momentum * Great campaigns do more than drive attention, they shift brand perception * Strong creative starts with customer insight, not trend-chasing LINKS Messaging Critique: https://lovable.dev/ [https://lovable.dev/]  Connect with Jack:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcully [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcully]  Connect with Elle: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/]  Website: https://www.productmarketingadventures.com/ [https://www.productmarketingadventures.com/]

Enable salespeople with AI like an Optiversal PMM

Sales enablement only looks like a messaging problem from a distance. Up close, it’s usually a systems problem. No clear strategy, no feedback loop, and training that happens once, then disappears. In this episode, Michele Nieberding, currently head of product marketing at Optiversal, breaks down how she transformed sales enablement during her time at Treasure Data by starting with diagnosis, not deliverables. She shares how to spot the early signals, like stage-specific drop-offs and objection patterns, then use real rep conversations to build clear hypotheses about what’s actually breaking in the sales cycle. From there, Michele walks through how she rebuilt enablement through purposeful experimentation. Not one big rollout, but repeatable reinforcement that actually changes behaviour. We cover why one-off trainings don’t work, how to make learning stick through repetition and feedback loops, and why measuring even small improvements in cycle time or stage conversion is what earns enablement trust. We close with a messaging critique of ClickUp, including why “Every app, every team” is bold, but can lose clarity if it doesn’t quickly anchor on a specific outcome and reason to believe. Key Takeaways Enablement problems are often strategy and feedback loop problems, not just messaging Start with diagnosis by finding where deals go cold and why Talk to reps to uncover real friction, then turn it into clear hypotheses Run experiments that reinforce learning over time, not one-off trainings Measure impact and iterate, even small gains build credibility Big positioning still needs sharp edges, clarity, and a clear outcome LINKS Messaging Critique: ClickUp [https://clickup.com/] Connect with Michelle:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michele-nieberding/  Connect with Elle: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/]  Website: https://www.productmarketingadventures.com/ [https://www.productmarketingadventures.com/]