Marketing's Blind Spot with Zoom's CMO Kim Storin

The boys sit down with Kim Storin, CMO of Zoom, for a wide-ranging, no-filter conversation on brand, AI, marketing mistakes, and why most companies are addicted to the wrong metrics.

On the menu:

• Why SaaS marketing became an MQL death spiral

• How Zoom thinks like a challenger while sitting on the throne

• Bowen Yang, Colin Jost, and building culture-driven brand campaigns

• “Human-in-the-loop” AI (aka stop shipping soulless AI slop)

• Why trust beats demand gen every time

• Marketing 🤝 recruiting 🤝 employer brand (yes, they’re the same fight)

• How to sell long-term brand value to a CFO who only speaks spreadsheet

  
  

If you care about brand, hiring, AI, or not turning marketing into an order-taking service desk — this episode is for you. If you don’t… well, you’re probably still downloading whitepapers.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:24.394)

Ohhhh

Joel Cheesman (00:29.29)

Yeah, old enough to know better, still too young to care. What's up everybody? It's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is riding shotgun as we welcome Kim Storin, CMO at Zoom. A little company you might have heard of. Kim, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast.

Kim (00:30.574)

you

Chad Sowash (00:40.444)

Hello.

Kim (00:44.044)

You

Kim (00:48.302)

That's right.

Chad Sowash (00:49.254)

zoom zoom in the boom boom.

Kim (00:51.778)

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Joel Cheesman (00:54.122)

Glad to have you here. Quick side note, we had some trouble logging into our platform of choice and Kim was really quick to go, you should be using Zoom boys, you should be using Zoom. So Kim, a lot of our listeners, watchers won't know you. Let's get to know what makes Kim tick.

Chad Sowash (00:59.062)

Ha!

Kim (00:59.086)

Yeah.

That's right.

Chad Sowash (01:02.781)

Mmm.

Kim (01:07.373)

I'm ready.

Kim (01:12.138)

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Kim Storin. I do marketing and communications. So a little bit of the corporate reputation as well as all of the go-to-market, which I find is pretty unique. We're seeing more and more marketing and comms, but it's something that I really love about having my role. I'm based in Austin, Texas. I've been here for

most of my life minus about 11 years on either coast. And I am a long distance runner, although I think I can't call myself that anymore if the last marathon I did was 2019. But you'll still find me running out and out on the lake every morning.

Joel Cheesman (01:56.148)

How many marathons in the books? Wow. And the biggest one, the biggest one you've done? Have you done like a Boston, New York, or are they all Texas? Okay. that's big.

Kim (01:58.414)

14.

Chad Sowash (01:59.793)

Whoo, hello.

Kim (02:01.368)

So I really need one more, I really need one more.

No, I've done New York, I've done Chicago, DC, LA, San Francisco, but not ever have I qualified for anything, we'll put it that way.

Chad Sowash (02:13.437)

Nice.

Joel Cheesman (02:16.361)

Well done.

Joel Cheesman (02:21.93)

I occasionally run to Arby's. Other than that, that's next to it. Kind of like a weeble thing. Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down. That's kind of my, that's my Arby's. Oh God.

Kim (02:24.268)

There you go.

Chad Sowash (02:24.381)

And when he says run, he means get in the car and drive. There's no running. Yes, yes. And that's and that's from the parking lot into order and back. Yeah. So so we're really leaving out a lot here. So first and foremost, let's talk about some of the some of the some of the experience in the history. Deloitte, manager of &A, Dell, director of comms for &A.

Kim (02:29.55)

That's right. Right. Right. Right.

Kim (02:37.487)

Thank you.

Kim (02:48.94)

Yeah.

Kim (02:53.965)

Welcome.

Chad Sowash (02:54.393)

AMD, director of worldwide brand, IBM, so many acronyms, VP of worldwide marketing, and then obviously the CMO of Zoom. There's a lot that I love seeing around &A because there's a lot of go-to-market that has to happen there, and there aren't a lot of marketing professionals that really have a go-to-market background. Why do you think that is?

Kim (03:11.212)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Right. You know, I'm not sure. think part of the challenges, especially in the SaaS world, you know, the SaaSification of marketing, I think was a real detriment to the function and the discipline of marketing and led to this over indexing on performance marketing, digital marketing, MQL, SQL, death spiral. And so you really lost focus on

Chad Sowash (03:31.964)

Uh-huh.

Kim (03:48.674)

the overall go-to-market strategy, the brand and communication strategy that goes along with that. I think we're finally, like AI is forcing us to revisit and get us back to basics, but it's, I think the over-indexing on metrics and trying to demonstrate ROI in a very short time period versus taking a longer view has hurt the discipline.

Chad Sowash (03:55.356)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (04:02.759)

Mmm.

Chad Sowash (04:14.173)

Mmm.

Chad Sowash (04:18.407)

We're going to talk about that. But before we get to the strategic and the technical things, want to, I want to start digging into a little of the lighter stuff with your newest ad featuring Saturday night live cast member, Bowen Yang. So Joel, go ahead and roll that beautiful bean footage.

Kim (04:34.176)

I love it.

Chad Sowash (05:05.021)

So that's amazing from the standpoint of Bow and Yang, a great production. Before we hopped on, didn't even know Colin Jost was a part of this whole process. just give us a little story behind this. You obviously were there moving the pieces along with Colin, right? Talk a little bit about getting something this high production value in play.

Kim (05:08.163)

Yeah.

Kim (05:14.467)

Yes.

Kim (05:21.39)

Mm hmm. Yep.

Kim (05:28.738)

So it really started with some research that I did before I even started at Zoom. And I talked to about 50 customers in the month leading up to my start date. And I got into some internet rabbit holes as well on Reddit and what have you. And I kept seeing and hearing over and over again, people love Zoom. And you would go onto Reddit and you'd have people that would just like, I mean...

Chad Sowash (05:34.493)

Mm.

Kim (05:54.434)

the threads around how much people love Zoom and how they hate our competitors. And so I walked in the room on that first day with a hypothesis that I wanted to test, which was, do we have an opportunity to reignite the love for Zoom through the users versus going after the IT buyer? And so the more that we looked at our NPS scores, the more that we talked to customers over the course of those first six weeks.

Chad Sowash (05:55.633)

Mm-hmm.

Kim (06:22.198)

I realized that there was something to that hypothesis. And our board gave us permission to be iconic. They really said, like, let's do this, like, be iconic. And so I wanted to find this intersection of heart and product truth and humor as probably the best way to facilitate that intersection. And so while I think I'm pretty funny, most people don't necessarily.

And so I wanted to tap into people that were truly part of the cultural zeitgeist. Zoom is very much part of the cultural zeitgeist, right? You watch Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast and Zoom is front and center. You watch the Sex and the City reboot this past season and Charlotte's on Zoom. You listen to Alex Cooper and she's talking about how she met her partner for the first time in a business meeting on Zoom.

Chad Sowash (07:06.333)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (07:19.129)

Mm-hmm.

Kim (07:19.82)

And so you realize how much Zoom is part of the culture of how you work and how you live your life. And so we really wanted to capture that and who better than somebody who is writing about culture and on the tip of the cultural zeitgeist every single week for Weekend Update. So that's why we wanted to work with Colin and his production team, which is

Joel Cheesman (07:42.238)

Mm-hmm.

Kim (07:47.808)

his agency is called No Notes, and they were fantastic. They partnered with us. They were very collaborative. This was really Zoom's first time doing a brand campaign of this magnitude. And so it was really critical that we brought the organization along with us and that people believed in what we were doing. And my executive peers understood the value of what we were attempting to do.

Chad Sowash (08:00.413)

Mm-hmm.

Kim (08:12.342)

And so getting that product truth right was really important because that was going to be the thread that brought them along with us. And Colin was very much open to that.

Chad Sowash (08:20.189)

Here's the thing though, Kim, you guys are the market leader, okay? In watching this, it felt like you were a challenger brand, which I find, that to me is exciting because most leaders don't, they don't see themselves and they're not aggressive and innovative. They just want to try to hold the mountain top. In this case, the commercial to me was that you were a challenger brand. You were challenging

Kim (08:27.032)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (08:49.851)

all of those other platforms that are out there, WebEx, the ones that make you download stupid shit to be able to actually use that you hate using every single day. But you position yourself as a challenger brand. Did you think about that in writing this?

Kim (09:03.818)

Yes, absolutely. And in some ways we are a challenger brand. We have a really unique business value proposition in the fact that we are ubiquitous. Right. And my mom uses them and so does my business. Right. And whether my business is for an SMB or my business is for an enterprise, there's a lot of like gray area in between those things. So yes, like on the, you know,

personal side and the freemium side were absolutely the market leader. On the SMB side, we compete pretty hard. And then on the enterprise side, we're competing pretty hard too with the likes of Microsoft and others. So in some ways, while we have this ubiquity, we are still a challenger and we can't forget that, right? We came in as a challenger and disrupted the space by bringing

Joel Cheesman (09:42.314)

you

Chad Sowash (09:47.165)

Teams, yeah.

Kim (10:01.462)

a platform to market that is easier to use, more reliable, and people just like using it. And our NPS scores show that. 100 % of the time in direct comparison, people choose Zoom. And so that really means something, but we do have to challenge that. We can't just assume that IT leaders who are day in and day out fighting for total cost of ownership, which is so important, but they have to change.

Joel Cheesman (10:08.223)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (10:28.444)

Yes.

Kim (10:30.962)

what TCO and what value of collaboration, like how it's defined. And meeting friction is real and loss productivity because of friction is real. And so we did want to take that challenger position.

Joel Cheesman (10:46.248)

Yeah, and I think you you you've been called a quote unquote transformational junkie. So so, you know, yeah, there are a lot of smaller initiatives in your in your profile that Chad didn't mention with all the big brands that are in there. And when you look at big brands, that's not necessarily always 100 % good thing. A lot of people know zoom as

Kim (10:51.182)

I do love it. Part of my &A background. I can't help it.

Chad Sowash (10:51.57)

You

Chad Sowash (10:55.901)

Yeah, yeah.

Kim (11:09.505)

Thank

Joel Cheesman (11:12.414)

the COVID meeting thing where I can put a background in that's kind of fun and easy to use. You guys are clearly trying to expand beyond that. And I think the commercial touches on that as people say, I use zoom for this, I use zoom for this, et cetera. So you've only been on the job since April. Obviously you did some homework before that, but what did you walk into and what do you hope the brand becomes if something different in the next call it six to 12 months that this ad kind of supports?

Kim (11:23.01)

Mm-hmm.

Kim (11:32.174)

Mm-hmm.

Kim (11:42.222)

Yeah, well, I think, you know, we walked into the truth of the platform, which is people love Zoom and that Zoom loves the people, right? We build the platform for simplicity, for reliability to give the people what they want in terms of how to collaborate and be more productive. Now, where we're going as we look at our growth is way beyond meetings. We have AI embedded into the meeting workflow in a really unique way.

We got some press over the last few days because of our federated AI model. And it's a really unique model that takes the best of all of the models out there. And as a result, we're able to like smoke them. yes, know, it's a federated is a very different approach to AI, but what it allows us to do is to help you reduce meeting friction, whether it's before a meeting, during a meeting or after meeting.

And that's really unique. And people don't realize that we have such a groundbreaking AI platform embedded into our workflows. People don't realize that we have a contact center platform for customer support. They don't realize that we have an events and webinar platform that as of today, we are award winning. We won an award for the Zoom-Topia event, which we ran of course on Zoom events. And people don't realize that.

So my goal is to share with the world how we have evolved this business and how all these things are connecting. And so for y'all in an HR recruiting space, we just acquired Bright Hire and we're bringing a recruiting platform now into the Zoom fold and the Zoom family. And so it's really important that we get that message out.

Joel Cheesman (13:23.572)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (13:32.234)

And I.

Yeah. And I think it's interesting in that I assume all of your interviews are on the zoom platform. I assume everyone sort of gets acquainted with it before they interview. How do you look at from a branding perspective that what you just, what you just encapsulated coming into the hiring process, making sure that your, your new employees love zoom as much as your users do is what's the bridge between

the product and the interviewing process and the hiring and when they come on board, like how do you think about employment brand from that perspective?

Kim (14:11.31)

Well, I think it's a little bit of a no brainer because I think the people that come to Zoom do love Zoom. Right. And that's how I felt. Right. Zoom was my preferred platform. Both. I've used it in three areas. I used it in my personal life. All my nonprofit granting work was done via Zoom. I use it. I have an SMB. I have a small manufacturing business as a family business. We use Zoom to work with our clients and teams.

And then of course I was a Zoom enterprise user and customer as well. And so I think a lot of people who come to this company are passionate about the fact that Zoom just works. And so from an employment brand, it's kind of self-selecting, right? They're applying and they're very clearly engaged with the brand, with the platform, and that's exciting.

I think, you know, the other piece, when I think about how we, how we ensure that employees are bought into the platform, especially as we evolve and transform is that everything that we launched to the public, we first eat our own dog food. So we're beta users of, of everything. you know, we get to play in the AI platform and workflow before anybody else does.

Joel Cheesman (15:17.204)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (15:33.18)

Mm-hmm.

Kim (15:33.228)

we get to demo everything and use it as part of our day-to-day before we roll it out. And so that helps build employee love and satisfaction for the product. And it also enables us to test and make that product ready for prime time.

Joel Cheesman (15:46.185)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (15:53.031)

So let's go ahead. We're going to get into the strategic and tactical pieces of it. So talking more landscape aside from Zoom and your experience, you're a big advocate in building strong brands that can decrease customer acquisition costs and boost long-term value. But in an age of instant gratification and only looking as far as next quarter, as you'd said earlier,

Kim (16:11.842)

I see you.

Chad Sowash (16:19.441)

How can companies institute a long-term value philosophy when it's pressing up against today's instant gratification business philosophy that every single organization seems to be pushing for?

Kim (16:33.518)

So I think it starts with partnership and collaboration education across the C-suite. And that is my job as the chief marketing officer is to make sure that my peers understand the value of marketing because it's really easy to get caught up in the coin operated world of sales. And marketing and sales complement each other, right? Sales' job is to hit quota in quarter. That is their job.

Chad Sowash (16:59.901)

They should.

Kim (17:03.562)

Marketing's job is to make sure that there is, you know, pipeline and revenue the next quarter, the quarter after that, the year after that, the five years after that. And so just by nature, yes, of course, like there are some products that have a shorter sales cycle that might be more transactional. That is, you know, part of Zoom's business is a very transactional online PLG model as well. But when you talk about enterprise sales,

And, sales, you know, both through the channel and through a direct sales force, it is a longer sales cycle. does require removing roadblocks. does require building relationships and, that's what marketing can deliver. But you've got to be partnered with the CFO and understand what you can measure, how you can measure and ensure that the definition of ROI is cohesive across.

the C-suite. It's when marketing tries to lead the way and measure things that nobody cares about. And so it's really critical that we're sitting in a room with our CFO, with our ops team, with our sales team, and building that view of metrics and bringing them along on the journey with us. Because when marketing is done right, brand is your most valuable asset. Point blank.

Chad Sowash (18:11.206)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (18:16.017)

Yes.

Kim (18:32.59)

It gives you the, if you have a, if you screw something up, brand gives you the air cover. If you bring something great to market, brand accelerates and exponentially improves that launch. And so it really is truly a different way to view the value of marketing, but it takes that collaboration and just being lockstep with your CFO to, to ensure that.

Joel Cheesman (18:43.934)

Hmm.

Kim (19:00.898)

those definitions are congruent across the business.

Joel Cheesman (19:04.178)

You know, Chad, before you before you, it's funny to me how much her statements sound like recruiting statements. We have to prove ourselves. We have to go to the CF, like they're a cost center that is always fighting for justification to be in existence. And it's just funny that we're talking to a CMO and you sound so much like a CHRO. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (19:04.293)

I think it's interesting. Good.

Kim (19:14.509)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (19:15.025)

Yeah. Yeah.

Kim (19:18.114)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (19:23.591)

Yeah, it's aligned. It's aligned. So if.

Kim (19:26.35)

Of course, of course. And I will say, like my dad's a CFO, so I have been justifying expenses since I was 10. And I know the way to their hearts.

Chad Sowash (19:31.122)

Mm.

Chad Sowash (19:38.077)

Yeah. So I mean, Joel and I, we both, uh, advise startups. Joel actually was an advisor to, uh, to bright hire. Um, so we advise startups, we've been in this game for a while and what we try to get most companies in our space to understand is that we're not selling blue apron meal kits or Tommy John underwear, right? This is not a transactional kind of scenario. This takes the one word that we haven't talked about yet. It's trust and many

Kim (20:07.086)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (20:07.323)

enterprise brands out there racing to beat their competitors to the lead. Like that next, the demand gen thing drives me crazy because they're forgetting to build trust first, which I've always taught have been taught that that's the cornerstone of every brand. And for some reason we're putting demand gen in front of the trust machine and it seems to be getting out of whack. So can you talk a little bit about that? Is that because the CMOs

Kim (20:12.748)

Right?

Kim (20:19.628)

Right.

Kim (20:23.574)

Inferring.

Kim (20:30.776)

Right.

Chad Sowash (20:36.645)

aren't doing what you're doing and they're not trying to get the CFOs and CEOs and the rest of the C-suite in lockstep. And they're literally just kind of like order takers. Hey, we need leads, so go get us leads now. We don't need this trust thing.

Kim (20:50.03)

You know, I don't necessarily think that. think, you know, what has happened is that lead gen is more measurable and therefore easier to justify the spend. But what's happening, right? There was a time when people wanted to give you their contact information to download a white paper. Those days are gone. We're moving into a no-click world as like LLMs are now, you know,

Chad Sowash (20:53.681)

Okay.

Kim (21:19.596)

the primary form of discovery and people are tired of AI slot. And so they're looking to get back to those basics, to have an authentic connection. Experiential events are back, PR is back. Customer references are more important than ever because they are ways that you can build trust and no one wants to give you their contact information to download a white paper anymore.

So that changes the game. so whereas before, you know, it was easier to be able to show a dollar in gets me $2 out. Now, we can't necessarily show that anymore because we may not have visibility into, you know, the AI, LLM journey of discovery, or because people are, you know, effectively.

Joel Cheesman (22:00.81)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (22:00.955)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (22:12.383)

Yeah.

Kim (22:17.258)

making their decision before they get to a short list. And that decision is made on trust.

Chad Sowash (22:24.775)

Yes, yes.

Joel Cheesman (22:25.012)

So talk about balancing that, because we just talked about CFO, Chad and I talk about the year of efficiency. I think we're in year four of the year of efficiency. And marketing departments are getting squeezed, do more with less. And of course, that means they're falling back. For a lot of them, it's AI. How do we create efficiencies in AI? But then to your point, there's a pushback to the slop. Recently announced iHeartRadio.

Kim (22:41.646)

to.

Joel Cheesman (22:51.41)

is now launching a quote unquote guaranteed human marketing and branding campaign where they pledge to use only real humans in their advertising. So how are you balancing the desire to be efficient and cut costs, but also now there's a need to be more human.

Kim (22:55.374)

You.

Kim (23:08.238)

Let's call it human in the loop, right? Which is like, is going to be a combination of AI and humans that enable us to be the best marketers that we can be, right? And when you use AI as a thought partner and a strategic partner, and you use it to help as part of the content process, yes, it absolutely plays a role, but the algorithms ding you for using AI.

Right? So there's a problem if you don't have humans in the loop. The world dangles you, right? I'm sure you guys saw the recent like, you know, Coke backlash on some of their AI generated images. So the world is not ready for inauthentic marketing. They want to build a connection. And so I think the companies that do human in the loop

the right ways are going to be the ones that win. And so there's absolutely a superpower and an efficiency and a productivity benefit, but humans play a pretty important role, but it's probably not the role that they used to play. So maybe you're not a content marketer anymore. Maybe you're a content orchestrator. You are managing five different AI agents because you want to be using different models.

Chad Sowash (24:10.385)

Mm-hmm.

Kim (24:31.768)

keeping it fresh, not your editing work. You have a different role than you did before. And so I think those things are what that human in the loop process will look like down the road. And we have an opportunity to get that right.

Chad Sowash (24:36.497)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (24:51.914)

A AI.

Chad Sowash (24:52.189)

to your Coke point though, literally just did some research on this. They were able to in a month do what they used to do in a year. So they had a hundred people, same amount of people, right? But they weren't paying them for a year. They were paying them for a month. They got to be able to push this through. I think it's so appetizing that we're going to have to find a happy medium to some extent. I think Coke is

Kim (25:08.778)

Exactly.

Chad Sowash (25:22.169)

addictive so they don't they don't care.

Kim (25:25.71)

You

Joel Cheesman (25:28.138)

Kidding. Kim, have, according to data that I saw, around 7,000 plus employees at Zoom. These are all human beings. These are all opportunities to expand the brand, to put a megaphone on human beings to talk about what you're doing. Obviously, influencers are huge right now. How are you looking at your employee, your workforce, as a potential

Kim (25:34.817)

and

Joel Cheesman (25:57.29)

lever to get the word out? How are you empowering them, engaging them, or do you even think about the workforce as a potential tool for marketing? Yeah, so talk about that.

Kim (26:03.086)

Oh, we do. Oh, we absolutely do. We absolutely do. We really see them as an extension of the brand. And obviously, you know, there is a social element to that, but there's also a, you know, event element. And there's also just an out in the world element. And because Zoom is so ubiquitous, right, you can be at a dinner party and

in one table, you can talk to an enterprise leader who is using Zoom. You can talk to an SMB business owner that's using Zoom and you can talk to a family member who uses Zoom for personal reasons. And so there's always an opportunity for evangelism and making sure we, know, Zoom does all hands every two weeks, which, you know, was very new for me, right? I was used to kind of a...

quarterly cadence of all hands. But what I've found is that that transparency and culture of clarity really does make sure that your employees know what's going on. We'll talk product releases, we talk technology, we talk business updates, we talk Zoom cares updates, we talk employee updates. And so they're walking out of those all hands with an understanding of what's happening.

across the organization and they're able to go be those evangelists, whether it's from a social platform, attending events and representing Zoom as a speaker or on the floor at an event, or representing us as an evangelist around that dinner table.

Chad Sowash (27:25.927)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (27:46.695)

I also think, and we want to go back to one of your earlier comments with regard to clients and really the center of where the narrative should be. We're starting to see a renaissance in moving away from what I like to call the me, me, me marketing where the CEO makes themselves the main character in the company's narrative all the time. And instead moving toward more of a customer center centric narrative where the customer is the main character and the rest of the C-suite become

Kim (28:12.738)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Chad Sowash (28:16.665)

literally supporting experts and literally just people that are there for just in case, you know, I need a technical answer or something of that nature, integration answer or something of that nature. But until then, our CEOs finally getting the, the, understanding or at least they're starting to buy in that nobody wants to hear from them. We want to hear from the customers. We want to hear from the people that have the problems.

that have gone through the integrations that know what the solution looks like because they're my peer, right? The people that are buying Zoom, I want to look at my peers and I want look at them because they know what my daily hassle is, my problems. And they're the people that generally are going to help me find the solution faster, not the CEO. Are we moving away from the kind of like Steve Jobs way of doing marketing and moving more toward customer centric?

Kim (28:51.608)

Mm-hmm.

Kim (29:16.344)

So yes, but I'll push back on that a little bit, right? Because I think it is important that the CEO is in the trenches with the customers. And I think that people do want to hear from the CEO, assuming it's not about me, me, me, but instead that it's about thought leadership in the industry, understanding where the industry is heading, being a technical expert.

on the product, being a customer expert on the things that are keeping customers up at night. And so I don't think that people don't want to hear from CEOs. I think that they want to hear different things from CEOs. And so they want the CEOs to be relatable. They want the CEOs to have a personality and to have a viewpoint and perspective on things that matter to them. And so of course,

Customer centricity is part of that, but there's a lot more wrapped into that that I think is really critical for the CEO to have a voice on. yes, we absolutely want the customers to be the center of the story. mean, our new ad is a love letter to our users, basically, right? And so we do, we want to keep that front and center, but I also don't think it's fair to say that the CEO doesn't play a role in that.

know, customer centricity or industry perspective. And so I do want Eric, you know, our CEO front and center with a perspective and a point of view. Um, I want his, you know, he is very accessible to customers and, that customer centricity comes through every time you hear him speak. And so I want him out there. I want him, you know, talking about the future of the industry.

because it is so authentic and our customers can feel that when they see him speaking.

Joel Cheesman (31:12.884)

But does he have a cool leather jacket like Jensen Wong at Nvidia is the question.

Kim (31:15.374)

No, but on Numetopia, he did get a free throw shot with Chris Paul and it was real. It was a one shot in the basket. So he got some cool points for that.

Joel Cheesman (32:54.942)

Zoom was a part of all your interviews. Are you face to face with Mark or with recruiting on a regular basis? Just how do you work with TA and your role as CMO?

Kim (32:59.064)

Mm-hmm.

Kim (33:10.712)

I mean, we work across the board. They are one of, because I'm hiring so much, they're one of my best partners right now, because they're helping me build my marketing team. But what we try to do is ensure that the content that we're producing and the work that we're doing, whether it's on the website or specifically for things like Zoom Cares, which is our philanthropic arm, that we want all of that collateral to be

Chad Sowash (33:21.052)

Nice.

Kim (33:39.97)

be cohesive with our overall brand strategy and narrative. And so we worked very closely with all of them on making sure that we put our best foot forward from a recruitment and also employment brand standpoint, and that we're making sure that the good work that we're doing through Zoom Cares is seen in the world. So.

You know, we, announced some big grants during Zoom-Topia for data.org and code.org and we just continue to make, you know, pretty substantial investments in, in philanthropy. And we want that to, get out in the world because we still believe that people want to work for companies that do good.

Chad Sowash (34:23.463)

That's amazing, Kim. I definitely like for all of the TA professionals, CMOs, marketing professionals, just to see the parallels that you were running with both organizations because a lot of times it feels like you're running in silos, right? When you're really not. So again, partner with each other, focus on that long-term value, build that trust. And Kim, if somebody wants to connect with you, they maybe want to continue the conversation.

Kim (34:45.57)

return

Chad Sowash (34:52.827)

Where can they find you?

Kim (34:54.476)

LinkedIn is probably the best spot.

Chad Sowash (34:57.935)

Excellent, Kim. That's Kim Storin. She is the CMO over a little company you might know called Zoom. Thanks again for coming in.

Kim (35:06.114)

Thank you for having me, it's been fun.

Joel Cheesman (35:08.148)

Keeping it human, everybody. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out.

Chad Sowash (35:08.495)

Excellent.

Chad Sowash (35:12.463)

We out!