This week, we spotlight Janine Pelosi. She’s the Chief Marketing Officer at Zoom.
Yeah. That Zoom.
We’d like to congratulate Janine Pelosi and the Zoom team on outstanding Q4 and Fiscal Year 2022 results.
The company saw revenue increase 55% year-over-year to almost $4.1 billion. Zoom also reported GAAP income from operations at more than $1 billion, an increase of 6% from the previous year.
You might think that Pelosi had the easiest marketing job in the world during the pandemic as Zoom became a household name. But that’s not the case.
Zoom gets competition from the likes of WebEx and Microsoft Teams.
And now that people are talking about “Zoom fatigue,” she still needs to keep the brand fresh and relevant.
Recently, Digiday spoke with Pelosi about that and other issues. Here’s what she had to say.
Janine Pelosi on Managing Zoom’s Growth
Pelosi says it’s time to take Zoom away from its reputation as a “killer app” in the industry.
She wants to transform the video conferencing product into a platform.
In fact, the company started work on that shift about two years ago. In other words, Pelosi looked ahead to the end of the pandemic.
She’s a strategist as well as a tactician.
Also, Pelosi says that she constantly thinks about the fact that billion-dollars businesses are being built on Zoom. That’s going to keep the pressure on.
She also likes to stay focused on the various use-cases that the platform needs to support. As those use-cases change over time, Zoom will update its software to support new business requirements.
Zoom’s Marketing Strategy: Segmentation
Digiday asked Pelosi how new and different audience segments impacted her marketing strategy.
She began her answer to that question by saying that the company no longer needs to build brand-name awareness. That happened by itself during the pandemic.
Heck, Zoom became a verb while COVID-19 forced people to work remotely.
As it stands now, Pelosi markets the platform with the theme of “different ways to connect.”
You can connect via video, chat, or phone.
Yes, phone. Zoom actually offers telephone service these days. And it’s becoming increasingly popular.
Pelosi’s Plan for Zoom Fatigue
So how does Pelosi plan to address the issue of Zoom fatigue?
She says that the blame is misplaced.
It’s not Zoom fatigue. It’s meeting fatigue. It’s home fatigue.
Pelosi believes people are feeling fatigued not because of her product, but because they’re trying to do way too much with their time.
Folks have responsibilities with jobs as well as families. And they’re getting pulled in different directions.
Along those lines, Digiday asked Pelosi to define “hybrid.”
To most folks, that’s the idea that employees will work remotely on some days and drive to the office on other days.
Pelosi says it’s all about managing your time.
“It’s understanding, at this point in the pandemic, what I do with my time,” she says. “If I’m going to have a really early start and I know I’ve got some later things, you can bet I’m going to workout in the middle of the afternoon and I’m not going to have a stitch of guilt about it. It’s taking time to go for a walk, have meetings over Zoom phone.”
Pelosi also believes that everything doesn’t need to be on video. Although she prefers video because it helps people stay close.
The Future of Zoom
So where to go from here for Zoom?
Pelosi says she thinks about Zoom Events. It’s a webinar-like solution that Zoom recently launched.
In fact, Zoom hosted its own conference (“Zoomtopia”) on Zoom Events. Pelosi says it was “fantastic.”
She also hoped for “some physical components this year.” Although that didn’t happen, she’s optimistic about the future.
“There’s going to be a lot of firsts that are coming that are really centered around our customers,” she says. “That’s what this is all about. If you think about the return to office and everything that’s happening there, it’s return to office, Zoom events, what hybrid is actually going to be defined as, and the developers. That to me is what’s next.”
Wrapping It Up with Janine Pelosi
Never quit innovating. That’s the lesson to take away from Janine Pelosi.
The folks at Zoom could have been victims of their own success. If they had just “held serve” and delivered the same product after the pandemic as they did before, the company’s growth would have been limited.
But Pelosi looks forward. She plays the long game. She’s ready for a post-pandemic world.
Are you?
