- Social Files by Tommy Clark
- Posts
- 🗃 Ramp’s insane new campaign
Hey!
Welcome to Social Files—your no-BS guide to generating demand for your B2B product using social & content.
If you’re wondering why you're getting two emails from me this week…well, if you did read the email that landed yesterday, you may have been confused by the fact that it was half-done.
My bad. Slip-up in the production cycle.
Today, I am coming to you again with the FULL breakdown of Ramp’s latest (insane) content play. It’s one of my personal favorite campaigns ever.
Shall we take a look?
🔎 DEEP DIVE
On Ramp & Kumar.
Reflecting on the most insane piece of B2B content I’ve seen to date.
Last week, Ramp published what may be the most insane piece of B2B content I’ve seen to date. Let me try and summarize this timeline in as few sentences as possible.
June 5, 2026: Kumar posts his first Instagram Reel to the tune of 2.7M likes. Not views. Likes.
Why did this video break containment and go so viral?
IMO, it’s to do with the juxtaposition between Kumar as a wholesome, retired account with the cracked-out terminally online aesthetic of the editing, soundtrack, etc. Contrast commands attention.
Anyway, Kumar continues posting, promising to reveal his ‘method’ on July 10, 2026.
Every Reel uses the same aesthetic and keeps building the anticipation, but with little pay-off for the viewer. The excess hype becomes part of the bit. Then, on the day before the supposed beginning of Kumar’s teachings, a new, mystery character gets introduced who ‘kills’ Kumar.
This is where the account loses the plot and starts introducing a bunch of new side characters into the ‘Kumar-verse.’ I personally tuned out, and it seemed that Kumar would fade into the ether as a passing internet fad.
Well, I was wrong.
This brings us to August 17, 2026, when, out of nowhere, Kumar returns—and in partnership with Ramp.
Of course, the content did well across platforms. And the CTA drove viewers to a landing page on Ramp’s site where you can opt-in to receive the Kumar Method.
Which begs the question: was Kumar a Ramp psyop from the start, or did Ramp partner with the account’s creators after the brief drop in popularity?
The X timeline was split on this, and I would have thought it to be the latter: an arbitrage play on an account with declining popularity. To my surprise, a little birdie told me Kumar was run by Ramp from Day 1. I can neither confirm nor deny.
Either way; insane stuff, and a reminder of why I fell in love with marketing in the first place.
‘Cause if I’m being honest: I’ve felt quite jaded by tech marketing lately.
Companies are incentivized by ridiculous growth expectations hoisted upon them by VCs to skew as direct-response as possible in their marketing. There is suffocating pressure to drive demos NOW. Drive pipeline NOW.
This chokes the risk and creativity from all the campaigns that could be.
It makes me sad, and the content worse.
Compound this with the mass psychosis that has founders trying to replace their entire creative teams with Claude, and you end up with the bleak, uninspiring ‘sea of sameness’ that is the LinkedIn timeline on a Tuesday morning.
Or the TSA line at JFK. Seriously, I saw this last week—claudeslop serif font and all.
I digress. Back to Kumar we go. I have no idea what ‘business impact’ the campaign drove for Ramp. I also understand Ramp, being a $44B company, has the luxury to do brand marketing in a way that a Seed-stage startup sprinting for a Series A doesn’t.
I don’t even want to think about how much this cost to produce.
I do hope, though, that this campaign from a company in a ‘boring’ category serves as a reminder that your content doesn’t have to be.
It can’t, if you want any chance of earning distribution in the current world.
TOMMY’S BOOKSHELF 📚
Current read: The Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts. I’m going to be reading this series for quite some time. There are 11 books, all ~800+ pages long. The good news: the books slap. I am 400 pages into Book 1 and loving it. If you're a fan of epic fantasy, I’d highly recommend.
Evergreen reminder: if you haven’t yet, do yourself a favor and read Red Rising. This is the gateway drug to fiction reading as an adult.
If you want more book content, I’ve built a little audience on Instagram where I post about fiction and writing.
BEFORE YOU GO…
As always, thanks for allowing me into your email inbox every week.
More from Social Files:
Talk soon,
Tommy Clark