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Embracing Your Brand, Even When It Becomes a Verb · Sales Pipeline Radio

0:17
Matt Heinz: All right, welcome to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
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We are recording today live at the Webflow Conference here in Boston.
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Excited to have this opportunity.
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Thanks again to Dave, to Allison, for the entire team for setting this up.
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We've got our own dedicated podcast recording booth.
0:31
People are walking by.
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They can apparently hear us as we record this.
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So hi, everybody.
0:35
Good morning.
0:35
Hope you're all doing well.
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Have with us for this episode, Whitney Magnuson.
0:40
She's the VP and head of brand and media at Zoom.
0:43
And I gotta be honest, like I'm tempted to spend this entire conversation just
0:48
talking about the National Karaoke League.
0:50
Would that be okay if we do that?
0:51
Whitney Magnuson: I mean, what's your go-to song, Matt?
0:53
Matt Heinz: Do you have one?
0:54
It I Well, normally it's, it's Friends in Low Places.
0:57
Whitney Magnuson: Okay.
0:58
All right.
0:58
Matt Heinz: Because I'm not a great singer, but most of the time if you
1:01
sing that song, you only have to sing the first line or two by yourself.
1:03
Whitney Magnuson: Everyone in the bar jumps in.
1:05
Matt Heinz: Yeah.
1:05
And then everyone jumps in as well.
1:06
Okay, we're, we're gonna get So on the That's, that's called
1:08
a teaser in the industry.
1:09
So we're, we're gonna come back to that a little bit.
1:12
But your day job I don't know, maybe that is your day job.
1:14
Your, your The, the job I have you listed here for is you're VP of head
1:17
and, head of brand and media at Zoom.
1:20
Whitney Magnuson: That's right.
1:20
Matt Heinz: So what does that mean?
1:22
What does your day, what does your day job look like?
1:23
Whitney Magnuson: Yeah.
1:23
So I've been at Zoom, just shy of a year and a half now, and, Zoom's really
1:28
been in the middle of a transformation.
1:30
I think we realized coming out of, you know, the giant kind of pandemic wave
1:36
that made Zoom a verb, that while all of that attention was great in one way
1:41
to become a household name, it also started to limit us as we introduced a
1:46
lot more than just video conferencing.
1:48
And so for us, this idea of brand and putting brand and media together in
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particular is really all about how we connect our broad reach brand efforts
1:59
to our demand generation media efforts in a more meaningful way so that we're
2:04
able to carry that message of Zoom being an AI first system of action
2:09
rather than just a video conferencing platform into the market all the way
2:14
to, through to our buyers and prospects, and really, make sure that sticks.
2:19
Matt Heinz: It's refreshing to see a company like Zoom not just
2:22
go to the demand playbook and do the traditional B2B stuff.
2:25
I was actually pleasantly surprised, earlier this year when I saw Bowen
2:29
Yang doing an ad, Yeah for Zoom, during the Super Bowl, during
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the College Football Playoffs.
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Talk about internally, like, that brand versus demand, opportunity.
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'Cause I think in some cases it becomes kind of a conflict.
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My sense is with Zoom it's sort of a one plus one equals four situation.
2:46
Whitney Magnuson: Yeah.
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Well, you know, we know that at any given time for B2B, less than 5%
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of buyers are actively in market for whatever we might be selling.
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And traditional demand generation has really only focused on that 5%.
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So when people talk about the funnel, right, they're talking
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about a very limited subset of potential users and prospects and
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buyers of whatever they're selling.
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So with brand to demand, it really allows you to open that aperture and think a lot
3:14
more broadly about, how do I make sure that I'm talking to someone before they
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are in market with an immediate need?
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How do I make sure that I am coming up in that consideration set as soon
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as they realize that they want to make an investment in this area?
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And that has become even more necessary and even more critical as we enter this
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zero-click environment that's been brought on by, you know, search changes in AEO.
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And so when buyers are doing so much of their research before they ever
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land on your webpage that requires a fundamentally different approach.
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And so that was why we've really leaned in on the brand side.
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We have some very exciting, continuations perhaps-
3:56
Matt Heinz: Ooh,
3:57
Whitney Magnuson: Ah of that, spot that you mentioned coming up very
4:00
soon, depending on when this airs.
4:01
Matt Heinz: No teasers.
4:03
Whitney Magnuson: But, so be on the lookout for that.
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And I think, you know, for us it's about how do we really change
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that perception in the market.
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When you have become a verb in the culture- You have to change the culture
4:16
itself to really shift that perception.
4:18
And so that requires kind of reaching a much broader base.
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Matt Heinz: I wanted I'm, I'm glad you brought that up, 'cause
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I wanted to ask about the Zoom Ahead positioning specifically.
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Right?
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'Cause we think of Zoom as a tool.
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I remember back in the day when Microsoft acquired Hotmail, like I
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was at Microsoft at the time, and
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Whitney Magnuson: I still have a Hotmail address, actually.
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And A
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Matt Heinz: Lot of people still do, and it still re-
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Whitney Magnuson: It's my spam address that I sign up
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Matt Heinz: For things with Yeah.
4:38
Well, okay.
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So at the time, we were like, we wanted to get to where people say,
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"I'm gonna Hotmail that to you." Right?
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And that's easier said than done.
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Talk about the opportunity and the difficulty of trying to manage
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a verb as part of your brand.
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Whitney Magnuson: Yeah.
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I think for a long time internally, Zoom kind of tried to position
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itself against that, right?
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That, oh, this is, this is a problem.
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We can't just become the catch-all term for video conferencing.
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But the ship has sailed, right?
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And, and you have to be based in reality on that people are going to
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say, "Hey, let's jump on a Zoom" when they mean Teams or Meets in some cases.
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And so with Zoom Ahead, we said, "If this is how people are already
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talking about Zoom in culture stop treating it as a friction point and
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start treating it as a gift," right?
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So we're going to embrace being a verb and say, "With Zoom, you can Zoom Ahead."
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And that was really about us showcasing the idea of conversation to completion.
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So yes, we have this legacy of meetings, of chat, of our CX functions,
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where you can have these customer service interactions, all of that,
5:40
where conversations are taking place.
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And what we wanna focus on now at Zoom is zooming you ahead to
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the completion part of your work.
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So taking the context of those conversations, using ZoomMate, our
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agentic AI tools, to really help get the work done that comes out of those
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conversations, whether that's updating a Salesforce CRM record or filing a
6:02
Jira ticket or creating a slide deck.
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Zoom's AI systems can do that based on the conversations you're already having.
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'Cause let's be real, the meetings, they're not going away.
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You're still having them.
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And so that's really what led us to Zoom Ahead, and this idea that Zoom can help
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you get to that completion state sooner.
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Matt Heinz: We're talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio live here
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in Boston, with Whitney Magnuson.
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She's head of brand and media at Zoom.
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How does someone with a law degree get into this line of work?
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Whitney Magnuson: Yeah, so I have a weird background.
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I tell, kids that I mentor, I say, " Do as I say, not as I do," right? So,
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so I started my career in PR. Was making, like, no money at all trying
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to live in Los Angeles, in the early 2000s, and my parents kept saying,
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"Go to law school, go to law school.
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If you become a lawyer, you know, you'll, you'll be taken care of
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for life." So I did, I went to law school, and Matt, I hated it.
6:56
Matt Heinz: No.
6:57
Yeah.
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Whitney Magnuson: You know, I liked the education part, but
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it was just no creativity, very little dealing with people in
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the type of law I was practicing.
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Just a lot of being locked in a room with a deposition and a highlighter.
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And so on the side, you referenced this earlier I, was actually
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on a kickball team at the time.
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As one does.
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And we were, we were terrible.
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And so we would drown our sorrows after the kickball games we Oh in a karaoke bar.
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That's great.
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And so I'm practicing law during the day, I'm losing kickball games once a week,
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and then I think to myself, "Why hasn't anyone invented a karaoke league?" Right?
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We need something for the theater kids and the band nerds and the choir
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geeks that were all, kind of left out of intramural sports that they can
7:45
do, as a social diversion as well.
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And so that led to me founding the National Karaoke League
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back in, about, the late 2000s.
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Grew that alongside practicing law for a number of until finally, that
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actually became my full-time job.
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We franchised the business into several different states.
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We had divisions all over the country, and after about three years of doing
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that, I actually sold my share in the company and was looking around going,
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"Well, what do I, what do I do next?" And, the one thing that I was really
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good at was building communities, building communities from scratch.
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And so I got a very intriguing call from Google that said, "Hey, we're
8:27
trying to do more in this community space. We don't really know what that
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means yet, but would you come on as a contract just to start and, see if we
8:36
can prove out a model to build a local community?" And this started in Austin,
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Texas, for their Google Maps product.
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So this was right after they had kinda failed to acquire Yelp.
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And so they were, they were trying to get more reviews on their
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platform, and that leap of faith, led to a marketing career, right?
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So then I was at Google for several years, I jumped over to IBM, then
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switched industries completely to Hilton, Northwestern Mutual,
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and then eventually to Zoom.
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Matt Heinz: Can we, can we speak directly to the kids for a minute here?
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Because I think, like, for your path is not uncommon.
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I was a journalism and political science major with an expectation that
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I was gonna be Woodward and Bernstein.
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I was gonna right the wrongs of the world.
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And I started out with a job, and I also hated it.
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So I ended up downward spiral to where I am today.
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I think, there's what you think you should as a kid.
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There's what your parents think you should do.
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When I went to school, I didn't, I wasn't expected to know what
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I wanted to major in right away.
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My daughter's a senior in high school.
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They're kind of asking her already "What do you wanna study?" So as an 18, she's
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17, as a 17-year-old, she's expected to know what she wants to do for a living.
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My advice to people is, like, listen, study what you enjoy.
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You know, I know you got the tension of what your parents are paying for
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and everything else, but just also know that a lot of life is written in pencil-
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Including what you study, including what you thought your career was gonna be,
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whether that's right out of school or whether it's five years out of school.
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That, you know, be intentional and be smart about your choices, but know that
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you can take advantage of serendipity and know that changes can be, changes from
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what you expected all along can be one of the best things you do in your life.
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Whitney Magnuson: Well, and that is even more true in the AI age, right?
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For so long, people have been told, "Specialize. Get really deep on
10:17
one technical subject matter and that will protect you," right?
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AI has that subject matter now.
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So it's, it's, for the advice I'm giving is become a generalist.
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Right?
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You may love brand, or you may love sales, or you may love social, but if
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you don't cross-develop those skillsets so that you have the understanding of
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how the full go-to-market motion works, how, buyers move through that journey,
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where the handoff points are, where the friction points are, then you're not ever
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gonna develop the taste and the judgment to be able to put a strategy into place.
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AI can help you with the specifics, but it's those general skills that
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are cross-functionally developed that I think are more important than ever.
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Matt Heinz: Yeah.
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I agree with you.
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I mean, what you guys have done with your I've got follow-up questions
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we may not have time to get to around sort of the Zoom Ahead,
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campaign and what's to come there.
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But you also were a juror recently with The Drum, looking
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at hundreds Yeah campaigns and other examples of sort of creative.
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What's, what stood out to you?
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What was, what was actually working, you think, in those campaigns, and
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what do people still get wrong?
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Whitney Magnuson: Yeah, I think, you know, you're starting to see even
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coming into those campaigns for the first time a lot of AI-centric motions.
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And where I think, campaigns were more successful is where they were really
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still leaning into a very human insight.
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Right?
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So I saw briefs about like, "Oh, we used AI to create a lot of videos and
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it helped increase, you know, clicks or whatever." That' that's fine.
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That's a tactic.
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Right?
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That's not a kind of a big idea.
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One of the best, things I saw actually was the, it was an outdoor brand.
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They make like uniforms and stuff.
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And they did this whole video series that was inspired by, the hurricanes
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that happened in North Carolina and all the flooding from a couple years back.
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And the idea of the next responders.
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You have fire and police being the first responders, but the next
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responders, eh, were like the utility line people that would come in and
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the flood repair people, and it was this incredibly human, heartlet- I
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mean, I watching this series, right?
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And you would not expect that from somebody that's trying
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to sell work wear gear.
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Right?
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And so it's, especially in a B2B motion, right?
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But it was because they led with this very human insight, they created something that
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was reaching beyond just their traditional category and buyer so that it does start
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to resonate in culture, and it gets passed along so that other people are saying,
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"Oh, I I need to check this brand out. I need to remember them." So, so that was
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really, those human-led insights were the things that led to the best case studies.
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Matt Heinz: I love that.
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You guys just, selected your first global media agency of record.
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I know that that is a process.
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That, not not a short process.
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A lot of people involved in that.
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I' I' I'm curious to hear what you learned, in terms of what, and what
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you're seeing from agencies these days.
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What did you learn from the pitch process, about media buying
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today in an AI-driven world?
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What were the things that stood out to you that you Yeah other
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people should be looking for?
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Whitney Magnuson: So there was such a clear division in the responses
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we got back to that RFP from a lot of traditional hold cos that came
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in with, like, "We're gonna get you the best access to vendors," right?
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"We're gonna take you to the up front and wine and dine you," and things like that.
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That is a very traditional of kind of media and advertising.
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On the other hand, you had, independent agencies, boutique agencies that were
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coming in and saying, "We have the AI, led measurement that is going to help propel
13:54
you to make the best targeting decisions." "We have the integrations across all
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of these different vendors that you're using to help you optimize your media
14:03
and your budget fluidity faster." Right?
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So it was from this very traditional, like, vendor vendor-led approach versus
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a tech and measurement-led approach, and that's really what stood out.
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And so we ended up with PMG, which was It was, it was about
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their measurement platform, Alli, that, is completely AI-led.
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I mean, from the moment that we set that up, I They have generative dashboards.
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I am not an Excel geek the way I wish I could be.
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And so to just be able to type in, like, "Hey, show me this specific campaign,
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this specific persona from the specific dates," and then it builds the dashboard
14:37
for I mean, thank goodness, right?
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Like so it's those types of things that really stood out, and I think is the way
14:44
that that industry is starting to shift.
14:46
Matt Heinz: We're, just wrapping up on our time here.
14:48
Did you really get to meet Seth Godin yesterday?
14:50
Whitney Magnuson: I did.
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So I was at Optimizely's event, Opticon and Seth was there.
14:56
He has a new book.
14:58
He, like, he makes you feel both smarter and dumber simultaneously because
15:04
you're hearing him and you're like, "I know something amazing," and then also
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you're like, "Why did not think of that?
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That's so obvious." Like, I've been doing this 20 years.
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Yeah how is he the only one that made that connection?
15:15
So.
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Matt Heinz: Well, I have not been able to personally meet him, but I've seen
15:17
him speak a couple times, and what I love about Seth is, like, it's 2026.
15:21
Like, he wrote Permission Marketing, like, what?
15:23
20 plus years ago.
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And he's still relevant, right?
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And I think it teaches that as much as things change, as much as
15:30
so much in marketing changes, the tactics, the strategies, and the
15:32
way consumers engage and everything, there are universal truths- You
15:37
know, that they're still persistent.
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And, I think for those of us that are, you know, just, you know, brave enough to sort
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of combine those things together, right?
15:44
To understand, like, what changes, how to affect that, but also, what
15:47
are the things that are still the psychological foundations of marketing?
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How do we lean into that too?
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That's how we succeed.
15:53
Whitney Magnuson: Yeah, and I think that also, again, goes back
15:54
to that, what we were saying about becoming a generalist, right?
15:57
If you can learn the foundation of, like, why certain tactics have been used
16:02
over the Right then you're, you're gonna have that better understanding to go
16:07
and make really successful campaigns.
16:09
Matt Heinz: I love it.
16:10
Whitney Magnuson, head of branded media at Zoom, thanks so much for being here.
16:13
Whitney Magnuson: Thanks, Matt.
16:14
Matt Heinz: Take care.