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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#769: Zoom CMO Kim Storin on why growth problems are often brand problems
00:25:36
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- [00:02]
Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [00:12]
Jack Welch Management Institute Announcer
Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird.
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Kimberly Storen
What is this, your first date?
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Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
Oh no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
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Kimberly Storen
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [00:24]
Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
- [00:27]
Jack Welch Management Institute Announcer
Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University helps you go from I know the way to I've arrived with our top 10 ranked online MBA. Gain skills you can learn today and apply tomorrow. Get ready to go from make it happen to Made it happen and keep striving. Visit strayer.edu Jack Welchmba to learn more. Strayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by Chev and its many campuses, including at 212115 Street north in Arlington, Virginia. The Agile brand.
- [01:13]
Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to Season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and martech platforms as we explore marketing technology, AI, e commerce, and whatever's next for the Omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. Now onto the show. In a world obsessed with conversion rates and customer acquisition costs, have we forgotten the one thing that actually makes both of them better? Agility requires more than just the ability to react quickly to market signals. It demands a stable strategic core, a brand that provides the necessary context and direction to ensure your pivots are purposeful, not just panicked. Today we're going to talk about a fundamental truth that many organizations are wrestling with. What looks like a growth problem is often a brand problem. When acquisition costs are climbing and churn is a constant threat, the default response is often to double down on performance marketing. But in crowded markets, that's a race to the bottom. We'll explore why brand is the ultimate lever for creating sustainable demand. Pricing, power, and the kind of loyalty that performance channels simply can't buy. Tell me. To discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Kimberly Storen, CMO at Zoom. Kim, welcome to the show.
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Kimberly Storen
Thanks for having me.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, looking forward to this conversation here. But before we dive in, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at Zoom.
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Kimberly Storen
Absolutely. So I'm the chief marketing and Communications Officer here at Zoom and I have responsibility for all functions under marketing and, and also external communications as well.
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Greg Kilstrom
Great, great. So, yeah, let's, let's dive in here and I want to start with, we'll talk about a few things here, but I want to start with what I introed is really this link between brand and growth. And you know, as I, as I mentioned, you know, a lot of growth problems are actually brand problems in disguise. So, you know, from your perspective, how does a weak or maybe undefined brand manifest itself in what are typically seen as performance or maybe pipeline issues?
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Kimberly Storen
So I think, I mean, so our brands are our most valuable asset. They are the biggest driver of growth across the board. Your product can be mediocre, your product can be non differentiated, but because of the loyalty to your brand, you can continue to grow your revenue. And so ultimately, I think you know where the challenge lies, especially for some of these smaller brands who, who may not have, you know, the hundred percent brand awareness that Zoom has. Zoom's brand challenges are a little bit different. We can go into that. But for, you know, organizations that may not have that, that awareness level, they still need to start thinking about how do they build that lifetime value of the brand, how do they start thinking about net ARR. Right. Not just new logos, but also that acquisition plus retention and brand is the lever that can cross that entire life cycle. And so that's where that investment really matters.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think we're, I feel like this can always be said at just about any point in time, but you know, we, we do live in a climate here where every dollar scrutinized. It's, you know, it's, it's hard to justify things that seem like they're, you know, whether they're vanity metrics or other things. And so, you know, I feel like it's, it's, it can be tempting for the C suite to view brand investment as something that's nice to have instead of something that, you know, to, to what you were just saying is, is, is more vital. How do you make that case, to a CFO or a CEO that, you know, this strong brand isn't. It's not an expense or it's not a nice to have, but it's a direct driver of some of the metrics that really improve margin and market share.
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Kimberly Storen
Yeah, I think shifting from marketing being a cost center to marketing being a revenue driver within an organization is the biggest challenge for a cmo. A lot of what we have to do is prioritize, prove the value of the work that we do, and also demonstrate the difference between the work that we do and the work that sales does. So being able to demonstrate how marketing can drive revenue next quarter, the quarter after that, the quarter after that, the year after that, the five years after that. Right. That is marketing's job. Sales's job is to drive in quarter revenue. And so that. That is a balance. And yes, there are times where marketing can help drive that in quarter revenue, but those are few and far between. We have to be looking out and kind of seeing where the market is heading and being that voice of. And the voice to the market. And so partnering with your cfo, making that the investment, the partnership investment that you're making across the organization is, is probably the number one priority in terms of shifting that mindset. So when your CFO understands where you're heading and why those investments that might not pay off right now, but will pay off in the years to come, the months to come, the quarters to come, you know, that is, that is how you, you can drive the, the understanding across the organization. And most of the time, sales gets it right. They understand they don't want to walk into next quarter without the air cover to make those deals happen. And the channel teams get it for the same reason. But I think once you can work and partner with your CFO in a meaningful way to really drive a more broad look at what marketing can deliver for the business, that's when you can start to see the investments for tomorrow that will actually drive the revenue sustainably over time. But it does. It takes an investment of time. It takes an investment of patience and really partnering across the. Across your peers, but really focusing in on how well that CFO understands the, the marketing levers and how it all works.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, and I think, you know, similar to kind of what you touched on the, the definitions of, of marketing and sales, there's also defining what is a brand. Exactly. You know, I think a lot of people have, you know, anywhere from the most basic a brand is a logo to, you know, a much more nuanced definition of that. But, you know, you. You've noted that a brand is certainly much more than creative or campaigns. How do you, you know, how do you define brand and. And what maybe gets overlooked most often in. In that definition?
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Kimberly Storen
Yes, I think it is. I mean, it's really multiple pieces that, that make up your brand, but it's the perception of your organization in the market. And so that can be perception of product, that can be perception of corporation, that can be perception of executives. There's a lot of layers and nuance to what that brand means. Logos, color, font, like, all play a role. Right? It is really important because the most important thing that your brand can do is drive distinctiveness in the market. It doesn't have to be about differentiation. I mean, it's nice when it is, but distinctiveness is really critical. And that's where the logo, the creative, the sound, all of those elements, the tone, the voice really play into to that distinctiveness in the market. So the creative does play a role, logo does play a role. But then you have the brand strategy and activation, and that goes way beyond. So where are you showing up in the market in a way that people can connect that to what the organization delivers for the customer? And so whether that is strategic partnerships or sponsorships, especially like sports sponsorships or, you know, top of the funnel media, all of those elements, those places. Pr, Right. PR is a great lever of brand activation. And so I think you have to think about both the creative and kind of the distinctiveness aspect, but then also the activation that delivers on that distinctiveness.
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Greg Kilstrom
I want to get back to something you briefly touched on earlier and just, you know, the Zoom does have a little bit of a different challenge than some brands that are, you know, I feel like Zoom is one of those. It's like Kleenex or Xerox or, you know, those brands. People say they have a Zoom meeting.
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Kimberly Storen
Yes.
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Greg Kilstrom
Often it's on Zoom, but it's not always on Zoom. You know, they're talking about a remote meeting. And so, you know, you have a unique opportunity and challenge. But I guess what are some of the downsides or maybe opportunities or challenges there in being such a ubiquitous name?
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Kimberly Storen
Yeah, so I think the biggest thing is that we are so much more than meetings and the world does not really yet understand the breadth of the Zoom portfolio. So the fact that we have a customer experience platform, that we have a webinars and events platform, that we have, an employee engagement platform, that we have, like a revenue acceleration platform, there's this automatic understanding that Zoom drives virtual meetings, but not necessarily that. We've invested in all of these other products and solutions that still stay true to our core competency but enable us to really move beyond the IT cohort into more functional line of business conversations. So I think that's our biggest challenge. I think the other one is the fact that we're effectively an AI company at this point. We have built a federated AI model. That AI model is unique and differentiated because of the context. Just think about how much of your life is on Zoom, how much of the information that you need to be successful day to day sits in the meetings that you have been having. And so our AI model is able to take the context from the meetings, from what you're doing within the Zoom workflow, and ensure that you're getting the insights and the capabilities that you need. So, so, you know, whether it's a prompt like catch me up, right, we have an executive meeting for three hours every Monday. There are times where I need to take a bio break, right, And I can come back in and ask my AI companion, like I've been gone for the last five minutes, catch me up and I can get the context and the insights and find out if I have any action items that were assigned to me in my, you know, in the time that I was not there and that note, taking those summaries, the in meeting experience of having that AI companion next to you to make you more effective is, is a key piece of what we do. And people just don't understand the breadth of our AI platform as well as the breadth of our overall portfolio. And so our brand has become in some ways a double edged sword because we have to, to pivot the market's understanding from this ubiquity of Zoom as a meetings platform into this breadth and depth of Zoom as a AI first collaboration or work platform.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. You know, I was, I was interviewing the CMO of, of Square, you know, a couple weeks ago and you know, I see I even made the little shape of the Square reader. You know, they have a similar issue of everyone thinks of them as that. And yet, you know, to your point, you know, there, there's a lot more going on, on, on that platform as well. It's almost like there's this, I don't know, do consumers have kind of an initial limit to how much they're willing to kind of how much real estate they're willing to give a brand or, you know, how do you, how do you get over that, that hump, so to speak, of you Know, is it, is it incremental? Is it, you know, how, how do you, how do you work towards G, you know, growing that awareness?
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Kimberly Storen
Yes, I do think it is. It is a lot of blocking and tackling, right. So first of all, like, you have to be where people are today, not where they were yesterday. So thinking about, you know, all of the places that are informing those LLM searches, thinking about all the places that are informing people's decisions right now. And reach actually matters. And we sometimes forget that, right, because we get so hyper focused on targeting. But the reality is that reach does matter. And that's where, you know, brand investment and PR investment really does help us as well as making sure we're in the places where people are discovering now that they may not have used to discover before. And, and so that's really critical and it's kind of chipping away at it, right? Meaning everybody has to sing from the same songbook. So every time that I've got executives on stage, we're making sure that they're talking about that broader portfolio, the broader benefits of Zoom, about our AI strength and uniqueness in the market and capabilities. And so it's just looking across that entire journey and making sure we're in all of the right spaces at the right time and recognizing the fact that there is no true funnel anymore, which means reach becomes even more important. Advocacy becomes even more important. So having customers and partners tell our story for us being in, you know, every place that is talking about work is talking about Zoom, and that's how we start to chip away at that and start to share those stories more broadly. That will help the world understand that we're not the Zoom that they know from five years ago during the pandemic.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think that that also brings up another point of. There's, there's this tension or either just this, this contrast often made between, you know, we're, we're brand building, we're doing performance marketing almost as it's, it's an, it's always an either or thing. I, I realize there's tactics that are involved in, in one or the other, but how do you see the relationship between those two things? Is it really as cut and dry as, you know, or binary or whatever or, you know, how do you look at that?
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Kimberly Storen
I mean, ultimately, when you think about what is demand generation, right. Demand generation depends on having great top of the funnel brand investment, and then it also requires great bottom of the funnel product marketing. And so you can't think about performance marketing in a silo because ultimately there's, who wants to give you their contact information for a crappy piece of content anymore. Right, right. So the importance of having great content requires being in the right place and having that reach. And then it also requires being able to, to answer all of those questions and take out of the, you know, take it off the table, any of those, those challenges that customers might have with your solution or product. And so if we think about performance marketing or demand generation by itself and in service of just itself, we will be throwing money at a problem, but not solving it. And so that's why I always think you have to think about that full spectrum, that full journey of, you know, of that barbell to be able to bring them in, get them engaged, build a community, have that advocacy, and then ultimately drive that retention after they have, you know, committed to your solution.
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Greg Kilstrom
So then from a, from a measurement standpoint, I mean again, these, there, there are going to be specific, you know, metrics and things at each of these stages of the funnel. But I mean to, based on what you're saying, I mean it's more a continuum than it is a. We, we measure brand like this and we measure performance like that. Is that, is that safe to say? Yeah.
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Kimberly Storen
I mean ultimately, I mean my view is like NET ARR is the holy grail. Yeah, right. It is revenue, new logos, acquisition and it's also retention. And so we have to look across the board. I think we are. The MQL death cycle has finally run its course, thank God. And, and I think the world is now thinking differently. Right. It's not about an mql, it's about an account buying group. It's not about an MQL to SQL kind of upfront pipeline generation. It's about that full net arrangement, you know, beginning to end of, of that engagement with the customer and driving retention is everybody's job.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah, I know we talked a little bit about Zoom's application of, of AI. But you know, maybe talk about how are you seeing success using AI as in marketing Zoom to the, to the world?
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Kimberly Storen
Absolutely. I mean part of the, the great thing about having an AI product that's embedded into our day to day life as Zoomies has really helped. So getting that comfort level of using AI companion day to day has helped me. From a marketing standpoint, being able to have a marketing team that understands the value of AI at your fingertips. So that helps first and foremost. Right. So how do you build on that? But from a marketing use case standpoint, we're really thinking about the overall workflow. So using the campaign workflow as an example. Right. Where can we leverage AI across that workflow to drive more efficiencies and scalability? There's a lot of places. Right. There is, you know, campaign strategy. So using AI as a strategic partner that we do a lot. There is content development, which obviously everybody is very aware of, all the use cases around content. There is localization that is so critical in being able to scale localization for all of our global markets with AI. That's another great use case. Turning hero content into snackable content that we can use across a variety of vehicles is another great AI use case. And then of course, measurement is one as well. Right. Building our dashboards. And so when you start to think like AI doesn't care if you sit in content or demand gen AI cares about the workflow. And so that's really like how we're starting to shift that mentality across the marketing organization is less around like finding use cases for content and more finding a way to empower that entire campaign workflow soup to nuts and leverage AI across the board and across that journey.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, I mean, it seems like the goal is more seamless integration rather than to your point, like, let's plop it in here and have it take over. Right. So it's more augmentation, is that.
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Kimberly Storen
It's definitely augmentation. I think it's really scaling us, which is great, and giving us the ability. I think the teams are really using it as strategic thought partners. We're using it across every function from competitive insights and product marketing, you know, all the way through, I mean, through that campaign workflow. And so again, like, I think for us, where we've really been able to be successful is taking the mindset of the workflow versus just the silos of functions.
- [22:29]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. Love it. Well, Kim, thanks so much for joining. Two last things for you before we wrap up here. So let's say we're having this interview one year from today. What are we definitely talking about?
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Kimberly Storen
Oh, gosh, I don't even know that I can say that because every day is something new that I didn't know that we should be talking about. I hope we're still talking about safety and trust in AI. You know, the. Some of the concerns that have come up around the content management around like AI videos, for example.
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Greg Kilstrom
Right, right.
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Kimberly Storen
We don't have to go into that, that challenge right now, but right there, there's a lot to unpack. And I think, you know, my hope for us in a year from now is that we're still thinking about how we, we do, we implement AI in the right way so they don't become systems of discrimination, that they don't become using people's likenesses without their approval, that we're not creating AI slop. We need to. And if we do, like, as we level the playing field because of AI, it means that marketers need to be more creative. They need to be focused on community and authenticity and engagement. So I hope we're still having all of those conversations a year from now to make sure that AI is working for us and, and, and in service of us instead of the other way around.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Well, last question for you. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
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Kimberly Storen
So I think, you know, agility is really important, but so is curiosity. And in a lot of ways, I think, you know, curiosity fuels agility. Agility obviously is, you know, the ability to look back and learn and grow and test and move forward. But I think curiosity is what really fuels that ability. And so for me, I keep a curiosity journal. I write down the weirdest things. You don't even want to see it, but it's things that are constantly fueling kind of my own engagement with the world and what's next and learning from people, places and things that maybe weren't. And so one of the things that I wasn't thinking about before, so one of the things I think about with my curiosity journal is how do I ensure that I'm not getting my information from the same sources and how do I continue to. So I track not just the, you know, what sparks the curiosity and then I go back and kind of dig into it, but I also think about, you know, what are the sources that are informing my curiosity and how do I make sure that I keep those sources broad enough that it's, it's enabling me to, to learn about what's next or think about something in a different way than I have before.
- [25:29]
Jack Welch Management Institute Announcer
Yeah.
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Greg Kilstrom
Love it. Well, again, I'd like to thank Kim Storen, CMO at Zoom, for joining the show. You can learn more about Kim and Zoom by following the links in the show notes. Thanks again for listening to the Agile brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagilebrand.com that's the agile brand and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.gregkilstrom.com. that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
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Jack Welch Management Institute Announcer
The agile brand.
- [26:43]
Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
And Doug there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [26:53]
Jack Welch Management Institute Announcer
Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird.
- [26:55]
Greg Kilstrom
What is this, your first date?
- [26:56]
Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
Oh no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [27:03]
Kimberly Storen
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [27:05]
Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
- [27:08]
Kimberly Storen
Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty.
- [27:12]
Jack Welch Management Institute Announcer
The Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University helps you go from I know the way to to. I've arrived with our top 10 ranked online MBA. Gain skills you can learn today and apply tomorrow. Get ready to go from make it happen to Made it happen and keep striving. Visit strayer.edu Jack WelchMBA to learn more. Strayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by Shev and its many campuses, including at 2121 15th Street north in Arlington, Virginia.