Zoom has been known since the days of the coronavirus pandemic for its video expertise. Now the company wants to demonstrate its talent by putting on a show.

Starting this week, Zoom is launching a partnership with podcaster and freelance journalist Nayeema Raza, creator of the show “Smart Girl Dumb Question,” where she seeks out leaders in business, science and culture to answer seemingly disarming queries. On Tuesday, Raza premieres a new interview series designed for social media in which he highlights “individual entrepreneurs,” or people who launch their own independent operations. He will also direct a six-part series on his own show, debuting in August, exploring how technology is reshaping work and leadership. In October, Raza will participate in Zoomtopia, Zoom’s annual user conference, and bring his content to the event’s main stage.

The alliance may simply be a harbinger of some of the new ways so-called “creators” are working with major marketers in an era when independent editors and reporters are increasing their appeal in the marketplace of ideas. According to data from Pew Research, younger adults are “especially likely” to receive news from influencers. About 38% of people ages 18 to 29 do it regularly, more than four times higher than the 8% of people ages 65 and older who do the same.

With creators having more influence among the group of consumers most likely to be open to experimenting with the products and services they purchase, “it’s important for us to be a brand that people like Nayeema and other creators want to work with,” says Kimberly Storin, director of marketing and communications at Zoom, during a recent interview. “We want to be a preferred partner.”

Raza broke into journalism with a background in documentary filmmaking and produced work that was featured at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. She released “Smart Girl Dumb Question” in February of last year, after working as a senior editor at the New York Times opinion section and as live executive producer of “On With Kara Swisher.”

Such a partnership requires new ways of thinking, Storin says, that some advertisers may not be accustomed to. Raza’s Zoom efforts will be inauthentic if she is not left alone to pursue programming as she sees fit.

“I need my audience to trust me,” Raza says during an interview. “I need to do what I do with a lot of editorial integrity.”

Conversations about the future of work are a regular part of Raza’s program, and there’s nothing jarring about having them supported by Zoom, he says. In “Smart Girl Dumb Questions,” Raza periodically examines “how we live, how we work, how we lead, how we have family or society in a world that is really changing technologically and culturally.”

The only change people should notice in the way Raza handles his work with Zoom is none. “The editorial is shaped by me. I ask questions I would ask organically. I talk to people I would talk to, and what the partnership with Zoom allows me to do is expand the possibilities of my content,” he says.

If Zoom wants to be a place creators trust, Storin says, then it needs to be willing to cede ground to the creators it works with. Zoom has had to “get used to creators being our advocates and sharing their stories. We like to write five-page summaries with railings and north stars, and we have to really learn for ourselves. We gave our influencers one-sentence summaries. And that was a big change,” he says. “And we really had to let go of the control that a brand normally likes to have.”

Zoom isn’t moving away from traditional commercials, Storin says, but sees a need to shift to new tactics as digitally savvy consumers discover services, products and brands in different ways. The “buying journey” is changing and is being “driven by a discovery process that starts in ChatGPT or Claude,” he says, referring to popular new AI interfaces. “We have to focus on being found, being present, believing us and preferring us, which is a new level of marketing.”

If the new partnership works well, other combinations of creators and marketers could become quite common.