This article was based on the interview with Kim Storin, CMO at Zoom by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
We’ve all sat in the meetings. The charts on the screen show customer acquisition costs climbing steadily skyward while retention numbers look a bit wobbly. The immediate, almost reflexive, response is to sharpen the performance marketing toolkit. We look to optimize bids, refine targeting, and A/B test landing pages into oblivion, all in a relentless pursuit of incremental gains. It’s a logical, data-driven reaction. It’s also, quite often, a fundamental misdiagnosis of the problem. What we meticulously track as a pipeline or conversion issue is frequently a brand problem in disguise, and throwing more money at the bottom of the funnel is like trying to fix a faulty foundation by repainting the walls.
In an economic climate where every dollar of marketing spend is scrutinized with the intensity of a forensic accountant, advocating for brand investment can feel like a career-limiting move. Brand is often relegated to the “nice-to-have” column, a luxury to be indulged in during boom times and the first thing on the chopping block when belts tighten. Yet, this perspective misses the most critical point: a strong brand is not an expense, but the ultimate economic engine. It’s the invisible hand that lowers acquisition costs, commands pricing power, shortens sales cycles, and fosters the kind of loyalty that no loyalty program can truly buy. It is the stable, strategic core from which all effective tactical agility springs.
Reframing the Growth Conversation: It’s a Brand Game
The modern marketing leader’s primary challenge is to connect every activity back to revenue. This has, understandably, created an intense focus on directly attributable, short-term metrics. But an over-reliance on performance marketing in a crowded market is a surefire path to commoditization and diminishing returns. The real, sustainable advantage lies in building an asset that competitors can’t easily replicate: your brand. As Kimberly Storin of Zoom argues, brand is not just part of the growth equation; it is the primary variable.
“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.”
This is a refreshingly blunt assessment that cuts through the noise of feature-wars and spec-sheet comparisons. In a world of near-parity products, brand becomes the decisive factor. It’s the reason a customer chooses you, stays with you, and forgives you when you inevitably make a mistake. It’s the difference between a transaction and a relationship. Storin’s point underscores a shift in thinking that marketing leaders must champion: moving the conversation from short-term acquisition to long-term value creation. This means focusing on metrics that reflect this reality, like Net ARR, which combines new logo acquisition with the equally crucial—and often more profitable—act of retention. Brand is the throughline that connects and elevates both.
The CFO Partnership: Translating Brand into Business Value
Of course, understanding the value of brand and convincing your C-suite peers are two very different things. The CMO’s perennial challenge is articulating the financial impact of what can seem like intangible activities. The key, according to Storin, isn’t a more convoluted attribution model or a fancier dashboard. It’s a strategic alliance with the one person who holds the purse strings and speaks the language of the business: the CFO.
“Partnering with your CFO…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, that is how you can drive the understanding across the organization.”
This redefines the CMO-CFO relationship from a budgetary negotiation to a strategic partnership. It requires educating the finance team on the long-term mechanics of marketing, distinguishing its role from that of sales. While sales is rightly focused on closing deals this quarter, marketing is responsible for ensuring there are deals to be closed next quarter, next year, and five years from now. This “air cover,” as Storin notes, is fueled by brand investment. When a CFO understands that a strong brand lowers CAC by creating inbound gravity, increases LTV through loyalty, and provides the pricing power that directly impacts margin, the conversation changes. Brand investment is no longer an expense; it’s a calculated investment in the company’s future revenue-generating capacity.
The Ubiquity Paradox: When Your Brand Is Too Successful
For most brands, achieving household-name status is the ultimate goal. But what happens when your brand becomes so synonymous with a single product category that it becomes a generic verb? This is the unique and fascinating challenge facing Zoom. It’s a “good problem to have” that quickly becomes a strategic obstacle to growth, a phenomenon Storin calls a “double-edged sword.” The brand’s overwhelming success in one area can blind the market to its evolution and the full breadth of its capabilities.
“Our brand has become in some ways a double-edged sword because we have 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.”
This illustrates a critical lesson for every marketing leader: brand management is a perpetual motion machine. It is never “done.” For Zoom, the task is to expand the market’s perception beyond virtual meetings to encompass their entire AI-first work platform, including solutions for customer experience, employee engagement, and revenue acceleration. This is not a simple advertising campaign; it is a concerted, multi-year effort of “chipping away” at an established perception. It requires absolute message discipline across every touchpoint, from executive keynotes and PR to customer advocacy and partner channels. It’s a reminder that even the most powerful brands must actively narrate their own evolution, lest the market define them by their past.
Beyond the Funnel: Integrating Brand and Performance
The debate over brand versus performance marketing is one of the most tired and unproductive in our field. It presents a false dichotomy. The two are not opposing forces but two sides of the same coin, working in a symbiotic relationship to drive growth. A powerful brand makes every performance marketing dollar work harder. Storin argues that thinking of them in silos is a recipe for inefficiency and wasted spend.
“You can’t think about performance marketing in a silo, because ultimately, who wants to give you their contact information for a crappy piece of content anymore?.. 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.”
This simple, pragmatic question gets to the heart of the matter. In an information-saturated world, a prospect’s contact information is a currency they spend with brands they trust. That trust isn’t built on a single, well-targeted ad; it’s the cumulative effect of brand-building activities. A strong brand provides the credibility that earns you the right to ask for a demo or an email address. Treating demand generation as a purely mechanical process ignores the human element of decision-making. The most effective marketing organizations understand this and operate on a full-spectrum, barbell approach where top-of-funnel brand investment creates the conditions for bottom-of-funnel conversion to succeed.
In the final analysis, the mandate for marketing leaders is clear. We must elevate the conversation beyond tactical optimization and reclaim brand’s rightful place at the center of our growth strategy. This isn’t a nostalgic plea for the “mad men” era; it’s a pragmatic response to the realities of today’s market. Building a distinctive, trusted brand is the most durable competitive advantage an organization can possess. It requires patience, conviction, and the ability to articulate its value in the language of the business.
As we navigate an era of unprecedented technological change, particularly with the rise of AI, this strategic core becomes even more vital. Agility is essential, but as Storin’s approach suggests, true agility is fueled by a deep-seated curiosity and guided by a stable brand purpose. This allows for pivots that are purposeful, not panicked. The brands that will thrive in the years to come won’t be the ones that simply shout the loudest, but those that have methodically and thoughtfully built a brand that commands attention, earns trust, and ultimately drives sustainable growth.
