I am sick of teleconferencing. The people I talk to are sick of teleconferencing too. For many people, Zoom was the cool new thing in March. It is late May and no one thinks it’s cool anymore. There is a name for it. It is called Zoom Fatigue^*. I’ve asked people why they don’t like it. Here’s what I commonly hear:

• It is impersonal. Even though you are seeing a person’s face and talking in real time, it still feels like you are talking to a machine.
• Eye contact is hard to do on a teleconference. You naturally look a person in the eye when you are talking to them face-to-face. Have you noticed that no one makes eye contact during a computer meeting? The reason is most video cameras on a computer are just above the screen. If you look at the screen, it will come across as if you are looking down. It is only when you look directly into the camera that you will look like you are making eye contact with your viewer. However, if everyone on a teleconference call is looking into the camera, then no one will be able to see the faces on the screen to tell if they are looking directly at you or not, so what’s the purpose of doing a Zoom meeting?
• Depending upon your bandwidth, you may experience some buffering issues, which will cause your connection to stop and start or disconnect altogether.
• It is overused. Every meeting seems to be a teleconference – from business meetings to school lectures; from virtual birthday parties to religious services; from graduation celebrations to rock concerts…it is everywhere and it is overwhelming.

All of those are contributing reasons that lead to Zoom fatigue, but here’s the biggest reason: it is a poor substitute for real human interaction and people are ready for the real thing. We were made for contact with other people. From the subtleties of facial expression to the way a person walks across a room, we have all become very adept at reading what is really going on with another person when we interact with them in person. This is where marketing comes into play.

In many ways, marketing is a social/psychology experiment. People deprived of being around other individuals long to be in a group. Groups, especially happy people in groups, make for great marketing opportunities. When you can attach your brand to a happy event it is a chance to make a connection in the psyche of your target audience: namely, good times and your brand go hand-in-hand.

I think there will be a big backlash against the impersonal teleconferencing phenomenon as we get back to work. As people start to congregate in groups once again, make sure your marketing is ready to take advantage of the opportunity.

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* Another pandemic woe: Zoom fatigue by Scott Rosenburg, Axios.com, April 22, 2020