Pandemic powerhouse brand hits pivot point
The pandemic has forced brands to confront pivot points this fall, and technology is a big one. (See my recent Forbes article.) But the tech leaders accelerating further adoption of their innovations aren’t immune to pivoting themselves.
Take Zoom, for example. Recently the video conferencing powerhouse reported its first billion-dollar revenue quarter. But despite the record growth, the world’s determined struggle to get back to in-person meetings and classrooms forecasts an easing of demand for Zoom’s services.
Large companies aren’t buying Zoom with the urgency they did a few months ago and are more carefully evaluating rival services. Smaller companies are starting to drop Zoom altogether.
Just as brands pivoted to leverage Zoom’s efficiency and reliability when the world went remote, Zoom must pivot to accommodate a marketplace working hard to move on-screen interactions back to in-person ones.
"We had expected that (the slowdown) towards the end of the year, but it's just happened a little bit more quickly than we expected," Chief Financial Officer Kelly Steckelberg said on an earnings call.
Video conferencing isn’t going anywhere, but to keep growing Zoom is pivoting with investments in Zoom Phone, a cloud-calling product for businesses, and making acquisitions, including a call-center software maker and firm that does real-time language translation.
It will be interesting to see where the pandemic’s most iconic brand, Zoom, lands as it adjusts to a less socially distant world. The key will lie in Zoom’s ability to reinterpret its value more broadly than video conferencing without losing its core equity. That reinterpretation is the essence of pivoting.
Stay tuned.
Kelly O’Keefe is a respected brand strategist known for his leadership in corporate brand strategy. He is a professor and chair of the creative brand management program at the VCU Brandcenter — a master's program for advertising, branding and creative problem-solving at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Business. He’s an inductee in the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame, a former Richmond Ad Person of the Year, as well as Virginia Entrepreneur of the Year; and he has been a strategic brand advisor to corporate clients like Capital One, Carmax, GE, ESPN, Walmart, Dominion Energy, UPS and many other leading organizations.
