Zoom’s evolution from pandemic-era meeting platform to AI-powered work hub has been years in the making. However, with a major consumer-facing “Zoom Ahead” ad brand campaign, the newly generally available AI Companion 3.0, and a redesigned Zoom Workplace experience rolling out in parallel, the company is now attempting to accelerate that shift in the public eye.
For CIOs, CISOs, and tech buying committees, the crux of the matter is whether the organization, the narrative, and the market are ready for what Zoom is trying to become.
A Zoom Brand Ad Campaign That Aims Past Meetings and Straight ‘Ahead’ at Work
Zoom’s Zoom Ahead campaign is deliberately loud. College football playoff placements, Super Bowl pre-show exposure, and a tone that leans into humour rather than feature lists illustrate a decisive break from much business orthodoxy.
As Melody Brue, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, observed to UC Today in the latest Big UC News show, Zoom is finally formalizing what users have done for years: “They’re using Zoom as a verb for the first time in their marketing, even though people have been using Zoom as a verb for a while.”
That linguistic change matters. It signals a bid for cultural relevance, not just functional relevance. Brue noted that the campaign reflects an uncomfortable truth many IT leaders recognize. “There are people who are forced to use other platforms but really want to use Zoom,” she explained. The idea of “bring your own Zoom” may unsettle governance teams, but it reflects a collision of employee preferences with standardization strategies.
Crucially, Brue argued the ads are not just speaking to workers:
“They’re showing a workplace environment where people are saying, ‘I want Zoom.’ That’s the IT buyer, too, who has to listen to that.”
The sports-heavy placement strategy reinforces this duality, targeting both early-career workers and senior alumni already sitting on buying committees. What appears to be consumer marketing is, in practice, enterprise influence by proxy.
Blair Pleasant, President and Principal Analyst at COMMFusion, expanded upon Brue’s comment, arguing that the campaign addresses Zoom’s core awareness problem. “It’s not talking about Zoom for meetings and video. It’s really talking about all these other things that people don’t know about.” Phone, contact centre, and Workvivo all exist, but outside analyst briefings (or the pages of UC Today), they remain poorly understood. The campaign, in Pleasant’s view, is a necessary corrective.
AI Companion 3.0 and the Push From Meetings to Outcomes
Alongside the campaign, Zoom quietly released AI Companion 3.0 from public beta to general availability. For Craig Durr, Founder and Chief Analyst of The Collab Collective, this is where Zoom’s strategy becomes operational rather than symbolic. He framed it around a phrase introduced at Zoomtopia: “from conversation to completion.” He added:
“If you’re just focusing on the meeting, you’re missing the forest for the trees.”
AI Companion’s value lies in what happens before and after the call: querying transcripts, generating actions, and staying within “a single pane of glass.” The ability to connect Outlook, OneDrive, Gmail, and Google Drive without jumping tools is not flashy, but it is precisely what enterprise users demand. Integrations are invaluable for IT leaders.
Durr also highlighted Zoom’s federated AI strategy, which dynamically selects models based on the task. There is still refinement needed, he stressed, but the direction is clear. “I think it’s fulfilling what they talked about at Zoomtopia, and I like that direction.” For buyers fatigued by AI theatrics, that emphasis on continuity rather than reinvention will resonate.
Zoom’s Bigger Bet: Becoming the Hub of Work
Where the ambition sharpens, and the risk increases, is Zoom’s desire to be more than just a collaboration tool. Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, is explicit: “they’re actually trying to make Zoom the hub of work.”
Acquisitions such as BrightHire, Bonsai, and Workvivo point to a platform where HR professionals, frontline workers, and managers could theoretically spend an entire day inside Zoom. That ambition is rare, and potentially disruptive. “I don’t think the world fully understands what it is Zoom is trying to do,” Kerravala said, adding that it is far from guaranteed Zoom can pull it off.
He also reframed decisions that puzzled the market at the time, such as Zoom Docs and Zoom Mail, as a data strategy rather than product competition: “It wasn’t to create a better email platform. It was so you have access to the data.” From an AI perspective, collapsing silos is the only way to deliver meaningful assistance. The weakness, Kerravala argued, is not vision but explanation: “they currently lack the storytelling side to help explain why they’ve done the things that they’ve done.”
UX, Discoverability, and the Quiet Importance of Getting the Basics Right
If brand and AI set the ambition, user experience determines whether it sticks. Brue noted that Zoom Workplace’s refreshed UI is not revolutionary but corrective. “The UI was a little clunky, to be honest. And now it feels like it’s getting lighter, less complex.”
What matters is not just simplification, but coordination. Brue saw the redesign as evidence that product, marketing, and leadership are finally aligned. “This isn’t product working in a silo.” Launching a major brand push while “cleaning up the house” reduces the risk of users discovering features they cannot easily find or understand.
Blair Pleasant linked this back to Zoom’s long-standing ethos:
“It started as ‘Meet Happy,’ and now it’s ‘Work Happy.’”
The language may sound soft, but the intent is practical, aiming to reduce friction for workers who already feel overburdened by existing tools.
Is the Zoom Ahead Ad a Sign of What’s Coming?
Not everyone is convinced. Jon Arnold, Principal Analyst at J Arnold & Associates, brought his marketing hat to the table and was skeptical. “It’s a very adversarial kind of message. IT wants you to work one way, workers want to work their own way.” He questions whether IT leaders will see themselves reflected fairly, or at all, in the campaign.
Yet Arnold also situated Zoom within a broader shift. Vendors across UC and CX are adopting more consumer-style, personality-driven branding as functional differentiation becomes less distinct. “You can throw them all in a hat, pull one out, and they will all do a pretty good job.” In that context, advertising becomes a strategic necessity, even if the first iteration doesn’t necessarily land perfectly.
Ambition Is Clear. Alignment Is the Test.
Zoom’s latest moves reveal a company attempting something genuinely difficult: redefining its role in how work gets done, while also shifting public perception along with it. The ambition is credible. The execution is improving. But the gap between vision and understanding potentially remains.
That tension mirrors a broader truth across business technology. Tools do not succeed because they are powerful, but because they are understood, trusted, and implemented by the people who keep organizations running. Platforms may promise transformation, but it is IT leaders who make it real.
For CIOs and executive buyers watching Zoom’s next chapter unfold, the future of work will not be decided by features alone, but by whether platforms can align technology, narrative, and human experience into something enterprises are actually willing to adopt.
The latest Big UC News show will be available to watch in full later next week.
