Zoom Verbal Identity Refresh

Role: Copy lead
Scope: Brand voice strategy, agency partnership, internal enablement

The problem

Zoom's copy was produced by writers, stakeholders, and — increasingly — AI tools across Brand, Growth, Product, and Marketing. Without a shared, specific definition of what "on-brand" actually sounded like, voice consistency depended on individual judgment rather than a documented standard.

My approach

I led this end-to-end, partnering with an external agency to develop the foundational voice framework, then took ownership of translating it into something Zoom's teams could actually use day to day.

With the agency, I:

• Briefed and directed the engagement, making sure the framework would solve for Zoom's specific gap — not a generic brand voice exercise, but one built around how writers, stakeholders, and now AI tools all touch copy.

• Co-developed the voice architecture with them in working sessions — landing on four traits (Confident, Clever, Human, Empowering), each with a behavioral definition, "we are / we aren't" guardrails to prevent overcorrection, and "write like this / not like this" pairs so guidance was actionable, not aspirational.

• Reviewed and shaped the strategic framework mapping voice intensity to content type (heavy voice in ads and headlines, more restraint in technical or sales content), so the guidelines would scale across everything Zoom writes, not just its highest-visibility work.

Internally, I took the agency's foundational work and extended it into tools people would actually reach for.

Why it mattered

Copy across Zoom has become more unified and intentional without adding friction — writers now have a specific standard to write to, and stakeholders have shared vocabulary for feedback ("this feels more clever than confident" instead of "this doesn't feel right"). We now sound unmistakably Zoom.