Finding Your Zoom Moment

My CEO recently used a term, “our Zoom moment.” As our Head of Product, this is something I spend a lot time thinking about. Can you prepare for a Zoom moment? What distinguishes a company who has Zoom moments vs. those who don’t? Are you missing your own potential Zoom moment? Let’s explore.  

What a product does (or needs to do) has changed more rapidly in the past quarter than at any point in the past 50 years. Some firms have been lucky to have ridden the Covid wave because their products were designed for trends that were heightened during Covid. 

Zoom is one, TikTok and Disney+ are two others. Let’s look at these three, what trends they were built for, and why Covid accelerated the need for them to exist. 

Zoom 

A solution whose product vision, and ultimate reason for being, was to serve the need that the existing landscape failed at.  

Recently I’ve seen many people discuss why Zoom is so popular; claiming that it’s identical to the other video conferencing tools. However, this is missing the critical indicator of successful companies that Zoom possess.   

Zoom was built by someone who came from the industry and knew that none of the products in the crowded landscape were built for a primary need. Founder Eric Yuan left Cisco's Webex because he “did not see a single happy customer” of the video-conferencing product he’d helped build.  

When Yuan built Zoom, he took a step back to build video first for today's tech stack and device trends. The result was the best of breed video conferencing tool that “just works” regardless of device or machine; and made everything else that has contributed to their success possible: Them to offer free versions that led to organic growth (3,500 businesses within 5 months of launch) which led to even more happy customers.  

During Covid, adoption of Zoom has grown massively outside its original B2B target, because a much larger user set than knowledge workers suddenly needed to connect via video.  Whether it was new types of professionals offering virtual services (work outs, therapy, coaching, etc.) or consumers seeking connection (happy hours, religious gatherings, community meet ups); the tool provided reliable connection.

In Covid times, that is something that matters. In April, Zoom reported that daily meeting participants had exceeded 300 million vs. 10 million in December. The results are undeniable, whether you look at it in terms of stock value, product installs, or customer reviews. 

TikTok 

Something fundamentally different than the crowded landscape was offering.  

When people look at TikTok’s recent success; many speak about the founder’s connection to youth trends or pioneering use of AI-based recommendation algorithms. I agree that that these play huge roles. But I also think there is a more illuminating insight lurking behind the claim that TikTok is “just for fun” or offers an escape from the more “high pressure” networks like Facebook or Instagram.   

Traditional social media applications like Facebook were built to mirror in-person connection networks, so users were generally confined to posts shared by their friends. This has two implications: one is that it limits the freshness of content you see (cue the “echo chamber discussions of 2016). Second, there is a sense of pressure that your connections are seeing everything you engage with, share, or create.  

TikTok founder Zhang Yiming envisioned a fundamentally different platform powered by artificial intelligence that showed users an endless stream of personalised and novel content.   The side effect was it took the pressure off. If you didn’t want your mother in law or fellow classmates seeing what you were engaging with, or the videos you made, you didn’t need to. 

Right now, during Covid, people are craving light-hearted and fun escapism.  TikTok  provides an excellent outlet that is easy to use, allows users to create easily, and feel rewarded by the algorithm that delivers their content to others giving reach and exposure to their creations. All without having to risk, real or perceived judgement, from your personal networks. 

Disney+ 

A product that repurposed a portfolio for a new paradigm. 

Disney+ launched at a time where there was an entire cultural phenomenon known as the “streaming wars.” They were launching, in part, to leverage a portfolio of content that had been created nearly 100 years ago. It certainly wasn’t optimised for streaming data architecture built on the scalability of cloud data lakes. 

Yet, Disney+ had something very valuable: nostalgia from nearly 100-year deep brand loyalty. There are people around the world who have loved Disney their entire lives. I personally remember singing M-I-C-K-E-Y throughout my childhood and looked forward to birthday parties at Disneyland (I was a California kid). I remember being in the theatre and watching in awe as Ariel swam upwards towards the surface. You likely have similar memories. For those enthusiasts looking to re-connect with their childhoods, Disney+ is the definitive repository for the company's work over the last 85 years. 

“I’ve never seen such a good execution of the incumbent learning the new way and mastering it,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said of Disney. “To see both the execution and the numbers line up, my hat’s off to them. Great execution, clarity around brand and focus really makes a difference.” 

Unlike their streaming competitors, content is not organised by genre, but by branded channel, delivering dedicated nostalgia for all those who have such strong affinities to Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, or National Geographic. 

In times of Covid where we are experiencing loneliness from physical isolation, taking a trip down memory lane and reconnecting with fond memories is something people are craving. Psychological research tells us that nostalgia is one of the most common and powerful responses to stress; helping us to emotionally weather tumultuous times.  As Disney+ recently overtook Netflix as the top streaming app of 2020, it’s clear that their product is likely helping many to cope around the world.   

Summary 

I see three similarities across these products. 

The first is that they were all built for customer trends that were accelerated by Covid. Whether it was video enabled connection with Zoom, a place for fun and escapism with TikTok, or Disney+ leveraging endorphin boosting nostalgia to help cope with stress; the trend they were built to serve increased with the global pandemic.  

Second, all three firms are examples of launching products in very congested categories. Search the earliest news on all and you’ll see scepticism expressed from early stage investors or media publications about the ability to compete against established players. I’d argue that, like so often is the case, those sceptics were missing a key insight that these firms had identified before the masses realised it. 

Thirdly is that all make people feel good. And that is something that, while not novel, will be increasingly more important for products to deliver in the future. Whether we’re talking about the front-line workers or general citizens, more people will suffer post-traumatic-stress levels of anxiety and fear caused by the threat to health and extended social isolation that Covid has created. 

Not coincidentally, these firms all had strong commands of consumer insights and customer trends. Zoom knew there were very few satisfied modern video conference customers. Yiming observed opportunities for personalisation that matched consumer mood. And Disney recognised an opportunity to emotionally capitalise on its existing assets to offer something new to enthusiasts.  

I believe that whether your Zoom moment comes now, or later, will intrinsically be linked to how well you understand consumer trends, leverage market research in your strategy, and stay connected to the underlying trends that guide your product vision.