“A signature story is an intriguing, authentic, involving narrative with a strategic message that enables a firm to grow by clarifying or enhancing its brand, customer relationships, organization, and/or the business strategy. Signature stories represent a critical asset that can be leveraged over time and which can provide inspiration and direction both inside and outside the firm. The challenges are to find, evaluate, gain exposure for, and give legs to signature stories.” (Aaker and Aaker, 2016). “
The covid-19 pandemic has caused many firms to collapse or fail. In the meantime, a company raising its initial public offering had raised 750 million US dollars, and now it is worth more than 35 billion dollars, that firm is Zoom.
Eric’s personal story is inspiring. We can see how an ordinary Chinese immigrant, from being rejected a US visa 8 times, became the Top 1 CEO ranked by Glassdoor. Eric Yuan, the founder and CEO of Zoom, created this conference or meeting software based on the difficulties of establishing a connection with his then long-distance girlfriend,now wife.
During this pandemic, Eric Yuan and his team have found a better way to promote Zoom. Firstly, the Zoom team realised that the pandemic had shifted the working and learning environment from offline to online, and Zoom provides an interactive and immersive virtual environment for meeting and study.
Secondly, the Zoom team collaborated with top universities with large numbers of international students who cannot travel abroad because of the closing borders. Those reasons indicate that Zoom has the accurate or right target customers that promote the usage of Zoom quickly and stably.
Zoom’s age and seniority are far below the established giants in the industry. As a young Internet technology company, Zoom’s development is inseparable from the founder’s first-hand strategy. Its brand story is mainly around the founder’s experience in creating the brand. Among the many stories about Zoom told by Eric Yuan, some of Zoom’s counterattacks have been repeatedly raised to influence brand feelings and brand judgement.
For example: In the story of Eric leaving Cisco, Eric’s old company’s product WebEx is described as a defective product and the predecessor of Zoom. Zoom is portrayed as an innovator in this story. In the case of how to beat Skype, Eric advertised that Zoom was as compatible as it possibly could with browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Safari, and the market feedback of the no-charge up to 40 minutes model is more enticing than competitors. The story of how to surpass technology giants such as Microsoft in the epidemic is used to emphasize its industry competitiveness.
Even if consumers started using Zoom before quarantine needs, they likely would not be aware of Zoom’s market position or inception circumstances. When consumers hear about these brand stories, consumers’ brand judgements and personal opinions on Zoom will subtly believe that this is a successful technology-based innovative enterprise.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs model
Eric Yuan’s journey of rejection and uncertainty provide an excellent background for humanising a success story by showing that business struggles can be overcome with the right set of circumstances.
The struggles are in connection to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, specifically the Belonging, Esteem and Self-Actualisation levels. A success story gains appeal when it has background factors like specific struggles that people can relate with or are currently experiencing, such as Eric’s difficulty in gaining a USA entry visa on multiple occasions or the inability to see his children for long periods, affecting his Esteem and Belonging needs.
The key to a brand story’s resonance are events that invoke an emotional response within individuals who take an interest in Eric’s story. Rather, it isn’t Eric’s venture success that fully inspires others, but it is the positive impact that his actions had on stakeholders and consumers.
Zoom’s ability to operate with latency loss up to 40% solved the issue of slowdowns experienced by users of multiple platforms connecting to a server, allowing Zoom’s use around weak internet connections, an issue working personnel have experienced globally for years, and having a problem this widespread can elicit responses of admiration and gratitude when resolved.
This gives a compelling brand story that inspires both employees within the firm to continue innovating on their work to gain feelings of accomplishment, and convincing potential entrepreneurs outside the firm to stick by their ventures despite the opposition.
Not many companies have authentic and heartfelt signature stories that are able to resonate with the market. Zoom has undoubtedly surpassed all expectations from the moment of its inception and rising to be one of the leading video-conferencing softwares in the last few years due to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s been a challenge for Zoom to gain the exposure and level of competitive success they currently have, especially when there have been dominant market players in the video-conferencing industry, such as Google Meet and Skype.
Zoom has created value and exposure for themselves through their initial startups, as Eric, the founder of Zoom, has been on many news outlets broadcasting their story, it has helped evoke positive feelings and judgements to potential consumers across the globe.
The signature story that Zoom has been given exposure for has helped clearly outline their position in the market. Referring to the CBBE model, Salience is achieved by satisfying a need to accommodate for large online video conferences between individuals, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, having first-movers advantage in providing this feature it has allowed Zoom to create strong brand resonance with new consumers, which allows them to create a greater sense of engagement with their product.
Sources
- The 11 of the best brand story
- Meet Eric Yuan, the founder and CEO of Zoom, who has made over $12 billion since March and now ranks among the 400 richest people in America
- Zoom,Zoom,Zoom!
- Video Call Victories: map reveals the most popular video conferencing platforms worldwide
Strataverse Consulting 