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- [00:00]
Kim Storen
Foreign. Welcome to Ad Exchanger Talks, the podcast devoted to examining the issues and trends in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you.
- [00:24]
Sarah Sluice
Today's episode is sponsored by Verve. First, Verve captures over a billion daily search, AI chat and zero party signals, giving brands and publishers a real time understanding of intent.
- [00:45]
Allison Schiff
I'm Allison Schiff and you're listening to Ad Exchanger Talks. My guest this week is the CMO and Chief communications officer of a company you're no doubt in intimately familiar with, and that's Zoom. Who among us doesn't zoom multiple times a day? Kim Storen has spent her career at the intersection of brand demand and technology with leadership roles at IBM, semiconductor company AMD and Rapid Deploy, a cloud based public safety platform she joined just weeks after the world went into lockdown in 2020. What timing. Right now at Zoom, she's responsible for evolving what's become one of the most recognizable brands in the world. From being known Primari as a video meeting app to being known as an AI first collaboration platform. We'll talk about what it's like repositioning such a ubiquitous brand, using marketing to give Zoom some swagger, why B2B marketing needs to be as emotionally smart as B2C, if not more, and how combining marketing and comms under one roof is part of a healthy growth strategy. Lots of other good stuff too. So let's talk about it. Hey Kim, welcome to the podcast.
- [01:55]
Kim Storen
Thanks for having me. It's good to see you.
- [01:58]
Allison Schiff
So what is one thing about you that not a lot of other people already know about you?
- [02:04]
Kim Storen
So I think there's a lot, I have a lot of little side hustles that I, I do, but one of them is a, is I'm a Pilates instructor. So I, I make a, you know, not a large salary, but I love it so much. And I spend my, my Sunday afternoons teaching, teaching Pilates. And, and it's been, it was a little bit of a, you know, midlife crisis. Some people buy Porsches. I spent 500 hours learning anatomy and learning how to teach Pilates.
- [02:38]
Allison Schiff
That's so interesting. You need to learn anatomy for what reason exactly?
- [02:43]
Kim Storen
I mean, it's all, I mean, if you, if obviously not every Pilates studio is the same, but if you go to, to real, you know, traditional classic Pilates studios, there's a ton of focus on anatomy and you're working, you know, on, on your posture and your strength and your, you know, right. As we, as we were sitting there slumping in our, in our desks every day and so understanding you know, muscles and, and how everything moves and, and where your bones are and the, the spine and how it all comes together, like, is really critical in terms of how we strengthen our bodies for, you know, what I call health span versus lifespan. Right. Leading a very healthy, healthy life and, and being able to, to move and to balance and strength and flexibility and all those things. All those things are really important.
- [03:37]
Allison Schiff
Well, all of those things that you also need to be a fully fledged marketer.
- [03:42]
Kim Storen
That's right.
- [03:42]
Allison Schiff
In.
- [03:42]
Kim Storen
That's right.
- [03:44]
Allison Schiff
I'm going to go back in time slightly though. So you, you joined Zoom as CMO in April 2025. So you didn't spend your, your pandemic leading marketing at a company that became sort of an emblem of connection and almost like a borderline utility and also like a, like a meme. Right? Like just mention.
- [04:02]
Samantha Dasher
Verb.
- [04:03]
Allison Schiff
A verb, exactly. You get mentions in SNL sketches, like back in 2020 when the world shut down and life, and especially work life went virtual. But In February of 2020, you left IBM, where you'd been for around four and a half years, as VP of worldwide marketing for their business unit to become CMO of a company called Rapid Deploy, which people aren't familiar. It's a cloud based public safety platform for 911 mapping and analytics. But what a time to be starting a new job. What was it like starting a brand new job? Right. Lockdown was beginning and I'm assuming you were suddenly using Zoom a lot, not knowing that one day, not that far down the road, you'd be leading marketing and communications for Zoom.
- [04:46]
Kim Storen
Exactly. And I think so. It was an interesting time for a few reasons. Right. The first was obviously I had made a big change in my career to go from very large brands to trying my hand at a startup. And of course, not knowing that a global pandemic was going to be right around the corner. And so it was a big shift for me personally in making that change and getting into the world of sas, but also into a world of public safety. And so what had drawn me to the organization was the purpose driven mindset and, and being able to, to transform an industry that had historically been, you know, very legacy tech oriented. And so then this global pandemic comes on top of that and, and you realize that the work that you're doing is even more important. So it was a, it was an interesting time. You know, I remember being in downtown Austin in the office when we got the notification that south by Southwest was canceled. And that was like the first time ever in history that something of that magnitude had been canceled. And we had to as an organization pivot pretty quickly to understand how we were going to be able to help our own employees. But then how do we stay really customer obsessed in a time when our customers were more important than ever? Right. Public safety during, during the, the pandemic was more important than ever. So it was a, it was a very unique time. Lots of learning and growth for, for me as I learned how to, you know, to go from a multi tens of billions of dollar company to a very, very small tens of millions of dollars of company. But it was a unique time for sure.
- [06:54]
Allison Schiff
And like you said, Zoom is, has become one of those rare brands that's like a verb, slash, noun in people's everyday lives. Like Google or Xerox or pass me a Kleenex. Like people will say, like I'll zoom you even if they're not talking about Zoom.
- [07:11]
Kim Storen
Exactly.
- [07:12]
Allison Schiff
So on the one hand, that feels like the ultimate brand awareness win. Like you do not have to fight for people to know you. But on the other hand, you could argue that it almost becomes a trap because people think they already know what Zoom.
- [07:25]
Kim Storen
Absolutely.
- [07:26]
Allison Schiff
So how do you, I don't know, how do you think about that and explode that? Because the kind of ubiquity that Zoom has achieved is a gift. And also, I don't want to call it a curse, but it's like it's a double edge sword.
- [07:37]
Kim Storen
I call it a double edged sword. Right. Because we do have almost 100% brand awareness. And, and that is a gift to, to any marketing leader. Right. To not have to deal with top of the funnel brand awareness. But as you think about what Zoom has become over the years, it is so much more than a video conferencing platform. And that's where our growth is coming. Our growth is coming from our webinars platform, the growth is coming from our customer support platform, from our AI tools. And when you think about, I mean, we have a recruiting platform, an employee engagement platform, the list goes on and on. The breadth and depth of the portfolio has really changed and grown, but yet we still fight this legacy view that Zoom is a video conferencing company only and that we're kind of a one trick pony. And so that is, you know, our challenge as a marketing function is to really think about how we shift that perception and how we open up the aperture of the world to what Zoom has become and, and help Zoom be synonymous with so much more than just the video platform. And so it is a double Edged sword. But it is one of the biggest, hardest, most fun marketing challenges that I ever had in my career.
- [09:04]
Allison Schiff
And for people who are hearing that you're doing construction in your house. Right?
- [09:07]
Kim Storen
Yeah. Sorry. Can you hear it now?
- [09:09]
Allison Schiff
No, it's totally fine, actually. And I'm calling it out, too, because when I think of Zoom, and you and I were talking about this before, I hit record for a moment. Zoom is what introduced colleagues to each other's personal lives in a way that hadn't existed before. You know, pets walking behind during recording, you know, like babies crying, just stuff happening in life. And it created this kind of closeness because you were invited into something. Someone's bedroom, for example. I'm recording from my bedroom. It's the only quiet place in my apartment.
- [09:46]
Kim Storen
Right, right, it is. But, yes, I apologize for the construction. So let me know if it's too loud. We had. So it was not supposed to be happening today, but we had an unexpected three days of rain in. In Austin in April, which meant that we were timeline shifted. We'll put it that way.
- [10:06]
Allison Schiff
You're all good.
- [10:07]
Kim Storen
They control the construction timelines.
- [10:10]
Allison Schiff
But I want to talk a little bit more about the work you've been doing to make it happen, like getting people to see Zoom beyond video calls, despite being so deeply embedded in the mental model that people have of, you know, Zoom as video conferencing platform. So you. You're trying to reposition as an AI first collaboration platform. And you mentioned all of these other products that I have to be honest, I wasn't familiar with. And you have to do that without losing your roots. And I read this interesting piece where you were interviewed from earlier this year. It was in the Drum about Zoom at 15, and I didn't realize you guys were 15 years old or 15 years since you launched, and you were talking about how you're thinking about what comes next. So what comes next? And how do you want to show up in the AI era and communicate that message without entering this sort of sea of sameness? Because a lot of companies are like, we're AI. We're repositioning for the AI era. You're like, okay, fine, sure, whatever.
- [11:09]
Kim Storen
So I think what's great about Zoom is so the AI era, like, the. The benefit of AI is context, right? Like, that is the supercharger of. Of any AI platform. And so when you think about what Zoom has at its core is context, right? Every meeting and conversation you have within your organization, every meeting conversation that you have outside of your organization, right? So with customers and Prospects and vendors and partners and candidates. All of that context lives in Zoom. And so what we are doing is, you know, we're not bolting on AI, we're not AI washing, but we are embedding AI into the core of the workflow and ensuring that that context drives insights, it drives action. And so we truly are becoming a system of action and being able to help our users and help our customers go from conversation to completion. And so whether that is, you know, we, we have a, now we have a Zoom note taking called My notes, right, that's part of the, the Zoom platform. And so obviously, you know, that transcription quality is, is top notch and it's just embedded into the platform. So we're staying true to our ease of use, but it's embedded, it's not bolted on. When you think about how we bring a virtual agent to customer support, there are times where you absolutely would like to talk to a human, and then there are times where I would much prefer a virtual agent to my human customer support experience. And so all of that AI, right, is embedded with our context. That comes from having, you know, the deepest level of conversations of any platform inside and outside the company. And so we've really been able to leverage AI as an accelerant versus just bolting it on. And I think that's what makes our platform so unique right now is that we are truly becoming that system of action. And whether you're an SMB who wants to free up time to be able to work, to be able to have more customers, or to, you know, be able to do your work faster with less people, we, we are announcing our Zoom Solopreneur 50 award winners in the next few weeks. And you know, what these folks are able to accomplish, leveraging technology as an accelerant is absolutely incredible. And it's what we're, we're built to support. When you look at an enterprise on the other side, because Zoom serves both, we are really able to help the enterprise reduce friction because of that embedded AI model. When you're saving 25 hours at a time for each of your employees, that's real time. Eric always talks about it in terms of, he's like, what if we have a four day work week? This is going to be the future of work. But I also think about it as reducing that friction and freeing up people's time to do more strategic work. And, and I think sometimes we don't necessarily think about how much friction there is in our workday, whether that's pre meeting or the follow up. Actions after meeting. And so our system of action is just really able to. To help reduce that friction. And whether you're an SMB or a solopreneur or whether you're an enterprise, it just means that you're getting to the outcomes, whatever those outcomes might be, depending on where you sit as an organization. That turns into, to real productivity, savings and real momentum in terms of revenue as well.
- [15:26]
Allison Schiff
So I want to talk about outcomes, but from a marketing perspective, because late last year, you guys launched a big brand campaign called Zoom Ahead. There was a TV spot with Bowen Yang, recently formerly of ns, nsl. Nsl, snl. Yeah. And it was created by Colin Jost, production house. It's very funny, and it's like one of the first times you guys are really leaning all the way into being a verb in cultural conversations. It had a lot of big placements. It ran during the super bowl pre show, for example. But how do you gauge the performance of a campaign like that? Like, are you looking for shifts in brand perception? Are you looking for consideration among procurement and increase in engagement with the Zoom platform? Some other mix of upper and lower funnel signals? And then how do you actually measure it?
- [16:17]
Kim Storen
Yeah, so all of the above.
- [16:19]
Allison Schiff
Yeah, and more, I guess.
- [16:21]
Kim Storen
Right, of course. But because this was our first time of doing a campaign of this magnitude, it was an opportunity, I think, first and foremost, which is not measurable. Right. This is not. This is not something that I'm going to finance and saying, look, look at. We. We needed to bring the swagger back. Right. And we needed. Because to your point, how we started this conversation, in a lot of ways, Zoom became a utility. And the area in which our core business is situated is almost commoditized at this point. And so how do you, like, we had to really start and bring that swagger back to the brand, bring the relevancy back to the brand. And that required us to be truly distinctive. And so working with Colin, working with Bowen, bringing, we knew that humor would make us stand out against our competitors. And so that was really, really critical. So can we measure bringing Swagger back? Probably not. But what we are measuring is all of the things that come after that swagger. So perception shift is really important. And we even just got some of our brand health tracking back yesterday, and we're seeing a tremendous shift in awareness and understanding that Zoom is an AI first platform. So that is something that we can absolutely measure. And then, of course, we're still in the vanity metrics phase because we're only been in market for about Four months. And so we are starting to see, you know, more improvement in terms of web traffic. We're starting to see better improvement in, you know, in, in some of the, the key, what I would call vanity metrics. But what we're also starting to see is, is how the demand is performing better now that we have legitimate top of the funnel in market. And so you're seeing, you know, because if you really think about what the buyer journey looks like now, there's not like awareness, consideration and preference. Like those days are gone. There is preference formation and then there's shortlist. And so in a lot of ways, like we've elongated the top of the funnel and it's become like this dark funnel. And then all of a sudden, like when you realize that you're talking to a customer, you are shortlisted or not. And so that's been a really significant shift. And it changes how we think about that connection between brand and demand. And so that velocity and that improvement in the demand performance we see very much attributed to the work that we're doing at the top of the funnel in that preference formation. All of a sudden we're starting to see ourselves show up in shortlists that we were never on before. And so, yes, it's hard to measure that top of the funnel investment, but when you can start to connect the dots between brand and demand, you can start to tell the story that the board and our CFO want to see. And we're seeing that velocity now happening.
- [19:44]
Allison Schiff
There is, though, this kind of weird, maybe not so weird, historical split between B2C and B2B marketing. And you have, you know, this notion that's finally taking hold that enterprise buyers are just people too, and you're trying to strike a balance in terms of tone and targeting with what you're creating to get your message out there so that it appeals to people when they're wearing their B2B hat, but also when they're sitting on a sofa. And the Zoom Ahead campaign, I think does that because it's telling like a human story. It's funny and it feels very B2C. But you're also trying to appeal to procurement folks, right? Right.
- [20:27]
Kim Storen
Well, and I think for whatever reason, B2B just gets a bad rap. And I really think it's like this
- [20:32]
Allison Schiff
white paper, you know, that's the vibe.
- [20:35]
Kim Storen
Well, and so much of that is because we over indexed on the importance of performance marketing. And it was something that our CFOs liked because we were able to show you. You get this much traffic, it Turns into this much, you know, MQL and then that turns into SQL, then yay, we're all happy. And, and really like that's not the way that the world works anymore. Right? People are doing 80% of their research before they ever want to talk to a seller. Now nobody. When was the last time that you put in your contact information for something? Like literally the only thing that I will put my contact information in is like compensation data that I can't get anywhere else. Right.
- [21:21]
Allison Schiff
It was the worst experience, by the way, not to take us on a tangent, but I'll never do it again. My mom had a couple of strokes recently, but miraculously she is totally fine. I mean she's so lucky. They caught it like really, really early. But she got a little bit concerned and she wanted like a medical alert thing and we ended up going with an Apple watch because she, she wanted to look cool. But I made the mistake of entering my contact information on one of those like consumer report style things and I just immediately started getting outreach and it was so aggressive. I started getting phone calls within minutes. It was insane. And I'm like, yeah, never, never again. I don't, this is, I don't want this to be my experience. And I imagine other people must be so freaked out. I was almost looking at it like a clinician. I'm like, ah, I see what happened here. But just like a normie, a regular person would just be like, hell no.
- [22:19]
Kim Storen
Right? We are over that time. And so that really changes how B2B marketing works. And we're going back to basics in a lot of ways. Right. Where earned media matters more than ever and experiential events. People don't want to be, you know, fed AI slop all day long. They want to connect with people, third party validations, review sites, referrals, all of that matters more than ever now because there's so much noise out there and, and it just reminds you that B2B marketing is good marketing and that a B2B decision is a highly emotional decision and therefore requires great marketing. And at the end of the day, if you go buy a new pair of shoes and you end up not liking it, what's the worst case scenario? Like your stepson? My stepson makes fun of me, like that's about it. But you know, there's, there's not much repercussion for making a bad choice on the consumer level minus like some money being out of your pocket. When you think about a bad Choice as a B2B decision, whether you are an SMB and you're running your own business where, like, cash flow is king or you are an enterprise, you know, decide like decision maker, and you've got million dollar decisions on your plate and your reputation is on the line and your ego is on the line and your job is on the line. And so for those B2B decisions, they are so emotional and they require connecting with people on an emotional level. Even though that emotion might be trust and privacy or it could be security. Right. Like, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're, you know, you're doing like an emotional campaign, but you're recognizing the things that are their pain points and the things that they're thinking about every day and keeping them up at night. And you're coming up with an interesting way to break through the noise and let them know we get you. Right. Like we, like we have walked a mile in your shoes. And I think so much B2B, like, wasn't really doing that for a long time.
- [24:39]
Allison Schiff
Definitely not. And there's been for a long time this acknowledgment that B2B marketing could be better, but it sort of stops there. A lot of the time people say things like, oh, let's bring a little more humanity to the B2B side of the marketing equation, but then it doesn't really seem to translate. And I wonder if that's because some of the higher ups don't feel like taking risk and they just want to, you know, wham, bam, sign up, thank you, goodbye, ma'. Am. They don't really want to invest in, like, O and Yang. Right, Right.
- [25:09]
Kim Storen
Well, I think it's hard because,
- [25:13]
Samantha Dasher
you
- [25:14]
Kim Storen
know, I won't mention names because I've gotten in trouble before for like, mentioning names. But there are some companies that try, right, to, to bring on the, the Big bang celebrity or to bring humor, but their brand doesn't have permission to do that. And what is so special about Zoom and why we've had so much fun with the brand is that we, like, Zoom is part of the cultural zeitgeist. Your mom uses Zoom, the dentist down the street might be using Zoom phone. The, you know, your therapist uses Zoom, and then your enterprise uses Zoom. Right. You go to work every day and use Zoom. And so I think we have permission to, because we have been in the cultural zeitgeist to play a cultural role with our creative and advertising in a way that some brands just don't have permission. And so I, you know, having come from brands. Right. That did not have, you Know that same permission, I didn't have that same permission at IBM. Right. That was not like our brand did not provide us with the ability to have that conversation. At amd, I had that permission. Like it was super gamer centric and very hardcore tech. And like we could push the limits because as a challenger brand against this monster intel at the time, right. Which has kind of changed a little bit now, but with a very big enthusiastic, you know, group of gamers that were gaming or you know, enthusiastic folks that were building computers in their mom's basement. Like, we had permission to be like, take some pretty big risks. And so zoom, like we're lucky we're part of the cultural zeitgeist. Like humor, like you started this conversation, right? Cats were walking across the screen, people were using emojis in weird places. Like there was a level of humor that just became synonymous with a zoom call that you can have a little bit of fun and push the envelope and take some risks with our brand in a way that I might not have been able to take, you know, with other brands that I've worked with.
- [27:31]
Allison Schiff
All right, we're going to take a quick break and when we're back, I want to talk a bit about what your role is because it encompasses a few things. It's not just marketing, it's also communications. And I have a few questions about that. So stick with us.
- [27:58]
Sarah Sluice
I'm Sarah Sluice, Editorial director of Ad Exchanger, and with me today is Samantha Dasher, SVP of Publisher Strategy at Verve, where she works with publishers on audience development and what may be one of the most interesting moments that open web has had in a decade. So welcome, Samantha.
- [28:16]
Samantha Dasher
Thanks so much, Sarah. It's great to be here.
- [28:18]
Sarah Sluice
Audience development is going through a real shift right now. How are you seeing discovery actually happen today?
- [28:26]
Samantha Dasher
Discovery is no longer a one way highway and honestly, I think that's a very good thing for publishers. A reader might find a story through Google, a friend texting them a link, a newsletter, A podcast mentioned TikTok are increasingly through ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini. What's changed is that there are now more surfaces rewarding quality content instead of fewer. If you create something useful, authoritative or genuinely interesting, there are multiple ways for that content to travel to the consumer. At Verve, we have a unique lens into this because we see roughly a billion publisher searches and LLM prompts every day. That means we can watch behavior shift in near real time. And what we're seeing is that the strong content tends to win everywhere. A well Reported article might rank in search, get cited by an AI assistant, show up in a newsletter and spark discussion elsewhere. And that compounding effect is real. And for publishers, it means the opportunity today is broader than it was during the era where everyone relied too heavily on one channel. So diversified discovery is healthier, more durable, and frankly, way more exciting.
- [29:32]
Sarah Sluice
So one of the biggest shifts that you just alluded to is that if I'm looking for information, I'm not typing it into a search engine as often, often anymore. I'm putting it in a prompt and it's giving me that full answer. So what does that open up? How does that change things?
- [29:49]
Samantha Dasher
Oh, a lot. Search queries were often really shorthand, two or three words with very little context. And prompts are very different from that. People are telling AI systems exactly what they want, often in full sentences with details, preferences, constraints and intent layered in. And that gives a much richer understanding of what consumers actually care about. Someone isn't just typing running shoes anymore. They're saying that they need marathon shoes under a certain budget because they over pronate and train four days a week. That's a completely different level of signal. Because we sit across both search and LLM activity at scale, we get to see that evolution happen side by side. It's one of the clearest indicators of where audience behavior is going. And for publishers, I think this creates real opportunity. The sites with actual expertise, niche authority and content that answers nuanced questions well are positioned to win. This is a much better environment than the old game of chasing keywords and volume for the sake of volume.
- [30:55]
Sarah Sluice
So with discovery changing so much and happening in so many places and new places, how are the publishers that you think are the most forward looking and innovative thinking about where to invest?
- [31:09]
Samantha Dasher
The smartest publishers we work with are doing two things at once. They're protecting and optimizing the channels that still matter today, while also investing in assets that compound tomorrow. Search still matters. It drives meaningful traffic and revenue. And publishers doing it well should absolutely stay focused to their. But we're also seeing real momentum behind newsletters, registered users, first party data strategies, direct relationships and content built to perform across AI surfaces. Those investments travel further because they create value across multiple channels at once. And part of what we help publishers do at Verve is understand where they already appear in search and LLM environments, where white space exists and where they can grow. When you can see a billion of these moments a day, patterns become very clear. I genuinely think this is one of the most interesting moments publisher has had in years. And I've been doing this for 16 years now. There are way more ways to reach audiences, more ways to monetize quality, and more value being placed on what great publishers do best.
- [32:15]
Sarah Sluice
So audience development is expanding and it's important to think of audience development as something that's encompassing AI as well as all of these other tactics that people have been using for a long time. So thank you, Samantha, and thank you to Verb for supporting Ad Exchanger podcast.
- [32:32]
Samantha Dasher
Thanks so much, Sarah. It was a real treat.
- [32:51]
Allison Schiff
All right, welcome back. And I have kind of a silly question to start out with. Does everyone at Zoom have to use Zoom? Like at Google, employees don't have to use Android. Like it's. It's encouraged, but it's not a mandate. But it would be pretty weird if you guys didn't all use Zoom.
- [33:08]
Kim Storen
We are all on Zoom. We also, obviously, but we also believe in eating our own dog food. And it's, we are always customer zero. And that's what enables us to bring products to market that really solve people's problems, because we are constantly testing and leveraging products that haven't even been released to market in some cases. So it is truly, we operate at the speed of Zoom. And part of that is we've really enabled people to provide feedback internally on how our products work. And we're in there and we're playing with it before anybody else might even see it.
- [33:50]
Allison Schiff
Okay, cool. Yeah. And as I teased before the break, so recently you were speaking, I read about it on a panel at the Conference Board's Corporate Communications and Brand Summit in Brooklyn about the advantages and maybe disadvantages of combining the chief marketing and comms roles into one role, like one person, which is the case at Zoom. You are, you are one person. And you made an observation that I'd like to unpack a little bit, which is that there are some marketing leaders who are more focused on demand generation and that's their historical purview. And some who are very brand oriented and some who are really focused on product and that if you come up through demand gen, it's harder to get that full view, but if you come up through brand, it's easier to think of the brand as just like a really important, valuable asset and then expand from there. I mean, at Zoom, you're very brand forward and you focus on comms, but you're also still accountable for growth and pipeline and platform level adoption in some way. So what, what's the benefit of having these roles under the same roof? And where do you see the biggest I Don't know, blind spots for CMOs with a primarily performance focused, demand generation focused background.
- [35:09]
Kim Storen
So I think, you know, the thing that I see as the, the biggest benefit is that, so there's so much gray area now, right? So if you ask any person, marketer, where should social sit, for example, you're going to hear comms, you're going to hear content, you're going to hear, you know, brand, you might hear demand. It's just the area is so gray now. Like you ask people like who should own AEO strategy, you get 5 million answers. And so as we start to see how critical communications is now with its role in AEO and geo, with its role in executive communications, right, that's now like the number one driver to LLMs. And it's not coming from your brand, it's coming from your executives. And so there's just a lot of overlap I think with, with things that have been historically clearly comms or things that have been historically clearly marketing, that having those functions together just means that you can move faster and that there's less silos and that because things like social, right, there is a risk of crisis on a regular basis, which, you know, is something that is right up the alley of communications. But there's also opportunity to drive demand and build brand and build community. And so I just find like reducing those silos and bringing those functions together is, is really critical. And then I think, you know, ultimately protecting our reputation, that is part of the CMO's mandate. And so how do you truly, you know, protect the, the reputation of the corporation if you're, if your singular focus is on revenue? Now protecting the reputation drives revenue, but I'm talking like when I say drive, I mean like the pipeline and the MQLs, right? And I think by starting to, to step back and define the role of the CMO as the voice of and the voice to the market with a respons sustainable growth, then you start to make sense of why does reputation matter so much in this world. Because if you're just talking about MQLs, reputation doesn't matter much if you're talking about sustainable growth. Reputation is a primary lever of sustainable growth, right? It drives retention, it drives preference, it drives, you know, consideration in a lot of ways. And now we're seeing as people are doing more and more research on LLMs, especially in the B2B space, that they don't, again, they don't want to talk to a seller until they're 80% of the way through and what is being picked up in those LLMs are things that have been historically comms functions. So if we shift that perception of like being the voice of and the voice to the market of being the driver of sustainable long term growth instead of short term MQLs, like let's let sales drive that in quarter, let's take a next quarter and a quarter after that and the five years after that view and then reputation is just so clearly aligned with, with driving sustainable growth.
- [38:54]
Allison Schiff
For sure. There are so many things we were talking about it before, right? B2C and B2B, those should really be thought of sort of as a spectrum. Brand and performance are connected, marketing and comms are connected. And so often they're treated as separate and it doesn't really make a lot of sense. I understand having them as separate roles, but people should definitely be talking to each other regularly. And you just alluded to this. But I mean LLMs are totally transforming how comms folks have to approach PR and earned media. And we don't really cover PR that much but, but we do write about earned media. And of course PR and earned media are two sides of the same coin. And increasingly you can do things like rapidly draft media ready narratives for different audience segments. You can use AI to surface like real time sentiment across social media and news. You can respond really quickly in ways that might have taken days or way longer to do in the past. And responding quickly is important when people are reacting quickly. So my question is how is that shift changing the kind of data that you have access to for, for marketing? So like when you take off like the comms chapeau for a second and put on the marketing hat and are you able to think of comms almost as more of a performance channel in some ways?
- [40:21]
Kim Storen
Absolutely. And we are starting to think of it in that way because of the importance in the AEO and GEO process now in a way that it really wasn't before. Like press releases are having a renaissance now. The press releases are, you know, different. Right. In some ways you are now focused on how agents are reading and interpreting your releases. So you're, you're really having to, to think about like how am I bringing in these FAQs and how am I ensuring that this narrative is like, requires no context. Right? Because if you're assuming that your primary audience now is an agent versus a human. So there is a balance because. But we're still, we're still pitching media so you've got to balance like well, I've got to be selling this to media but I also need to be leveraging this for an agent. And, and so it really changes and it is becoming, you know, more and more strategic. Those media relationships become even more critical. So I think the, the function of comms is, is becoming fairly bifurcated. Right. Where you have to be super analytical and understand how the LLMs work, what they're reading, how it's being interpreted. And then those media relationships are becoming even more critical than they ever were because the media is humans and they don't want to be drowning in AI slop.
- [41:54]
Allison Schiff
We do not.
- [41:54]
Kim Storen
Relationships become even more, even more important. And the comms leaders now have to be thinking about both of those things. So there is more of a technical skill set that's coming forward. And there's also more of, you know, those, I hate to call them soft skills because they're hard skills, but you know, a lot of that, like human to human connection, that's even more important than ever.
- [42:22]
Allison Schiff
So I can't believe I haven't made this like, little joke yet because we're this far into the podcast, but I want to zoom out and talk about measurement a little bit more and feedback loops. Because at Zoom, you are dealing with a longer feedback loop than a pure performance brand. It's not like you're sitting at your desk or I don't imagine you're sitting at your desk watching daily purchase Velocity dashboards. It's like you're thinking about, oh, you are. Okay, we do a little bit of both.
- [42:51]
Kim Storen
So our business is, is split almost like perfectly down the middle of transactional and enterprise. And so on the transactional side, we are living and breathing that data every single day. On the enterprise side, not as much. Right. Because that is, that is a longer sales cycle. I mean, for our customer support platform, that is 18 month sales cycle.
- [43:19]
Allison Schiff
Yeah.
- [43:19]
Kim Storen
And so it's a, it's a very different model than our, you know, transactional model. But we have to manage both. And that's for marketers, like, that's the big challenge is, is how do you, you know, how do you focus on that transactional and then, you know, go and think about the long tail as well.
- [43:39]
Allison Schiff
So what sort of metrics are most important to you with that in mind? And how do you measure incrementality, especially when you're trying to separate the impact of a big brand campaign like Zoom ahead from the rest of the whole demand and sales motion?
- [43:56]
Kim Storen
So I think there's a, I mean, at the end of the day, there's a ton of metrics that you can be measuring and sometimes it's a trap for marketers to. To get so into the weeds, and we have to be right there. There's times that we need and, like, those dashboards are super helpful. But what I have found and, like, what I'm, you know, working on now is how do we actually step back from that and start to understand the themes? So instead of just getting caught up in the individual dashboard metrics, what, like, how are we stepping back and seeing the story and seeing what breaks? Like, are we breaking at conversion or are we breaking at workflow adoption, or are we breaking at retention? And like. And so the work that we're trying to do now is actually to go beyond these individual metrics and start to plot them on the customer journey from, you know, awareness, if you will, all the way through to retention and starting to understand that holistic story. Because I think what happens is when we start to pull out one metric or another, we lose sight of the story that the metrics are actually telling us. And it's a journey that we've been on and something in particular with our transactional business that I've been looking at closely because we, you know, we tend to get distracted by one or two core metrics. But it's not until we step back and say, oh, wait, hold on a second, we need to go fix conversion or retention before we go fix the awareness. And so that's the journey that we're on right now is more about like. Like being able to pull out of the weeds because we have so much data at our fingertips, but we don't have enough insights at our fingertips. And that's a skill set that we're trying to embed within our, you know, our marketing and an online function to ensure that we're thinking about the business holistically and really, like, understanding that end to end journey of the customer.
- [46:24]
Allison Schiff
Right. Things like lifetime value are so important, but a lot of brands don't. Well, they know it's important, but because it's hard to measure people, it's hard to measure. And the acquisition people are on a different team than on the people who focus on engagement. And so you're not noticing when someone's about to churn and then you're paying to reacquire them, but maybe they've already formed, you know, a negative perception of you and you're just wasting your money.
- [46:52]
Kim Storen
Exactly.
- [46:54]
Allison Schiff
So going back to zoom as a verb and being part of the zeitgeist, there's a lot of positive stuff that comes with that. But then you also have to deal with some negative connotations, like the phrase zoom fatigue. We've all experienced being on too many video calls, the pressure to look on and all of that stuff. The strain of reading social cues on a screen. And zoom fatigue became shorthand for virtual meeting burnout. Even if someone was using a competitive service, they're not even using Zoom. So how do you flip the script on something like that?
- [47:28]
Kim Storen
Well, I mean, I think ultimately, right, we're now. That felt like something we dealt with during the pandemic. And I don't know that that is like the biggest challenge that faces our brands at this point. I think there is clear value in the opportunity to connect with people in a remote fashion.
- [47:53]
Samantha Dasher
Right.
- [47:53]
Kim Storen
Even if your company is back in the office, your Japan team still sits on a different continent and there's still value in you being able to connect with your customers that sit on a different coast. And so I think the, you know, the value of the platform is there. I think the real challenge is not some of that, like, negative connotation anymore. Right. It's the commoditization of the platform. And, you know, I think we're going to continue to see, right, as, as geopolitical tensions rise and there's, you know, gas prices and travel, travel costs and all these things. I think Zoom and, and remote engagement and communication and collaboration will pick up again. Right. I think it's become embedded into our, our daily life. But I think we're going to start to see, you know, people leveraging that more as, as those travel costs go up. I think as organizations realize that context is king and you lose a lot of context when people are not on a Zoom like platform.
- [49:08]
Allison Schiff
Right.
- [49:08]
Kim Storen
When you have the water cooler talks, there's a lot of value, but it's hard for your agents to be able to act on a conversation that happened at a water cooler. And so I think we are ripe for continued conversation on the value of a collaboration platform. And potentially uncommoditizing, if that's a word, we'll make it one the experience sense, right? Because we've become so commoditized. But now, as context is king, we have an opportunity to, you know, potentially reinvent the role that that Zoom plays, because only Zoom has the level of users, the level of ubiquity, the level of conversations inside and outside the organization. And so the context becomes the accelerant for the business. So I think we're right for like a re. Un commoditization of remote collaboration just based on, like, some of the geopolitical. And also the fact that if we truly are becoming agentic, those agents need context in order to work and take action on your behalf.
- [50:39]
Allison Schiff
Context and just to be constantly, constantly, like, eating. They're very hungry. They just want to consume all the things.
- [50:45]
Kim Storen
Tokens, tokens and tokens. Right.
- [50:49]
Allison Schiff
So, penultimate question. Totally different. There's this bit of fun history that predates your time as cmo, but Zoom briefly ran a small advertising experiment a few years ago where you served ads on the Zoom browser page that would appear after a meeting ended for basic users. But then Zoom shut down the program to focus on product and platform rather than becoming an ad network. And fair enough, it makes sense. The experiment makes sense, and then also not doing it makes sense to me. But is there any chance that Zoom might experiment with becoming an ad seller again at some point down the line? Or have you just, like, been there, done that? No, thanks.
- [51:28]
Kim Storen
It's, you know, obviously it's something in the back of our mind. Anytime you're thinking about, I mean, as you watch, like, OpenAI, I try to monetize their platform and, you know, even the debate of, like, should we, should you monetize your, your YouTube channel? There's always that question kind of in the back of a back of your mind. But as of right now, it's not a, you know, a priority that, that I'm thinking about on a daily basis, but it's something that, you know, crops up every once in a while as I'm thinking about, you know, how do we, we drive sustainable growth for the business. Absolutely.
- [52:01]
Allison Schiff
Anything can be inventory. I think that's our lesson of recent years. And now a very important and silly question to end on. Do you have a favorite Zoom background? I mean, I haven't used one in a while, but there was a time back in 2020 when I had this enormous photo of my cat looking absolutely huge in the background, just like an overlord, like, looming over me. And I found that very amusing for a while.
- [52:27]
Kim Storen
So, no, and I'll actually be, you know, controversial in saying that I, I, it is very rare I will use a Zoom background at all. Mostly because I didn't just, you know, I like the natural environment and I like how my hair looks, and I like all of that. But what I will also say is that the construction that you're hearing downstairs is because I am building a, a new Zoom background which will hopefully be unveiled in the, the next week or so as I'm moving my office from upstairs to downstairs.
- [53:01]
Allison Schiff
Okay, got it.
- [53:02]
Kim Storen
And I'M I'm building this monster floor to ceiling built in that is, is really beautiful. And so it's not a virtual background, but I'm going to be unveiling my new zoom background very soon.
- [53:15]
Allison Schiff
All right, that's cool. When you were saying that you like your hair, I'm like, oh, that makes one of us. I've been growing out my hair from, like, a very short pixie cut for long time, and there were just so many awkward stages. And when I was preparing for our chat, I was just messing around on Zoom and I didn't realize that you could add, like, lift color and you
- [53:37]
Kim Storen
could add make me look zoom ready without being zoom ready. Yes, enhance.
- [53:42]
Allison Schiff
Enhance your eyebrows, but also you could add facial hair. So I gave myself a goatee for funsies. At one point, I'm like, yeah, turn that one off. Otherwise I might end up like Lawyer Cat, if you remember. Lawyer Cat.
- [53:56]
Kim Storen
Yes, exactly.
- [53:57]
Allison Schiff
I love Lawyer Cat. I go back and watch that video periodically because it just warms my heart. And for. For anyone listening who doesn't know what Lawyer Cat is, please read the article that will accompany this podcast. And I will link to Lawyer Cat because he is delightful.
- [54:14]
Kim Storen
That's hilarious.
- [54:16]
Sarah Sluice
It. Today's episode was sponsored by Verve. Find out more@verve.com that's V E R-V E.com.
- [54:42]
Kim Storen
Sam.