ZoomCopied

Zoom became a household name as a video-meeting app. By September 2022 it was also selling webinars, connected conference rooms, phone, persistent chat and a new contact centre, and it wanted its brand to say so. Chief marketing officer Janine Pelosi framed the update as the visible part of a longer evolution, from video app to communications platform.

The changes are about clarity rather than reinvention. Zoom says it updated its visual identity across colour palette, typography and product icons, and singled out one change: the core Zoom blue was adjusted to improve legibility and accessibility. A new hero visual was introduced to explain everything the platform now includes. Zoom Chat was renamed Zoom Team Chat, a persistent hub for messaging, files, calls and whiteboards, as part of the same push toward a broader platform.

Zoom did not name a design agency for the identity in its announcement. It launched on 12 September 2022 with a campaign that piled extra Os into the Zoom name to list phone, rooms, events, whiteboards and contact centre, running on digital, social, streaming and in Times Square. The company told Marketing-Interactive the new logo, colours and type would roll out across its site, products and social channels over the following weeks.

The competitive target was obvious. Marketing-Interactive framed the Team Chat push as Zoom doubling down against Microsoft Teams and Slack. Two months later at Zoomtopia, chief executive Eric Yuan said the team had shipped more than 1,500 features that year, and Zoom added mail and calendar to the platform.

Commercial Integrator read the logo as competitive positioning. Zoom Chat was renamed Zoom Team Chat at the same time and reframed as a hub for messaging, files, integrations, voice, video and whiteboarding, while the wordmark gained four extra Os, each holding an icon for a product: chat, phone, meetings, rooms, events and contact centre. The trade site placed the move against Microsoft Teams and other rivals building all-in-one suites. Marketing-Interactive added the backdrop of fading pandemic momentum: Zoom had once been the third app ever to pass 300 million installs in a quarter, but by 2022 was out of the iOS top ten in several Southeast Asian markets.

The logic is sound but the execution, at least as announced, is modest. Tuning a brand colour for accessibility is the right kind of decision and easy to underrate, and a consistent icon family matters for a company whose products are multiplying. What the refresh does not do is give Zoom a new idea; it is housekeeping for a brand that grew up very fast.