Channel Report: Pinterest
Michaela Strand | 11/13/12
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Agenda

Overview


What is it? Why does it matter?
How Brands should use Pinterest

Examples

New Features

Looking ahead


Future of e-commerce?
Legal Concerns
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
2
Pinterest | An Overview


Virtual Pinboard

Highly Visual

Users are 79% female

Content categories: food & drink
recipes, arts & crafts, home
décor, visual art and design,
fashion etc.

Android, iOS and iPad apps
What’s the opportunity for
brands?

Drive deeper brand connections
and evangelism

Draw traffic to brand-building
content

Increase site traffic & sales
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
3
Why it matters | Pinterest by the numbers


Growing Fast

20MM Users today

Pinterest debuted on ComScore’s
50 most visited sites in September
2012 with 25.3MM monthly visitors
Huge driver of referral traffic


Fourth largest driver of traffic to
other websites, beating out Yahoo,
Bing and Twitter
E-commerce Opportunity

Users spend an average of $169
per order on a referral from
Pinterest
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
4
How do you make $$ on Pinterest?


Pinterest has not defined a
revenue generating model yet

No ads

No API
Pinbooster, first ad platform to pay
users to re-pin brand content


Similar to a pay-per-tweet model
Pinfluencer, a new Pinterest ROI
and Pin-to-Purchase tracking
system

Integrates with Omniture,
Coremetrics and Google Analytics
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
5
How should brands use Pinterest?

Whole Foods uses Pinterest just like
any other user...

Pins relate to Whole Foods’ core
values:

Natural, sustainable, organic etc.

Content does not necessarily point
back to the grocer’s website

A large portion of the content is
culled from blogs or third-party
websites

Bloggers serve as ‘Contributors’ on
certain boards

Examples: #WhyAustin board, Go Go
Gadgets
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
6
Do’s & Don’ts
DON’T
DO

Be aspirational and inspirational

Be overly promotional

Create subtle and creative boards
that cover a wide range of topics

Re-create your entire
product catalog

Be visual


Use high quality images
Affix price tags to your
pins*

Forget your website
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
7
*Price Tags | The jury is still out…

When you affix a price tag
to a pin, it gets
automatically added to a
feed called ‘Gifts’, which
allows users to browse
pins based on price-range

Considering that 70% of
users come to Pinterest to
“get inspiration on what to
buy”, this may not be a bad
idea after all

More follow-up studies are
needed to dive into this
question further
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
8
Just because you aren’t a retailer….
…doesn’t’ mean you shouldn’t be on Pinterest too!

Content is still king

GE

The Wall Street Journal

Major League Baseball

Random House Books

Mashable

Southwest Airlines

IBM
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
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Common Marketing Tactics


Re-Pin to Win

Submit board URL via email or
Comments

Ask users to name board or use
specific hashtags

Examples:

Sephora Color Wash Sweepstakes

Better Homes & Gardens
Woobox Facebook tab
applications

Free

Duplicative
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
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What we can do | Run a Sweepstakes



Capabilities

Feature one board or an entire account

Feature most popular pins or most recent

Re-Pin buttons
Customer Examples

Hyatt ‘Win Free Time’ Sweepstakes

Kohl’s Narciso Rodriguez Sweepstakes
Lackluster performance

Too many steps

Directing users off Facebook
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
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Kotex | Personalized Gifts

What:


Kotex selected 50 influential
Pinterest users and sent them
customized gift baskets filled
with goodies and new Kotex
designs based on their unique
style and taste on Pinterest. To
redeem their gifts, the women
had to pin a photo of their gift
basket.
Result:

2,284 Interactions and nearly
700,000 impressions. Women
also posted to Twitter &
Instagram
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
12
Honda | Pintermission

What:



Honda gave $500 to 5 active Pinners,
asking them to take a day off from the
site and treat themselves to the things
they’d been pinning about. In return,
Honda asked that they share images
from their short break on the Honda
Pinterest Page.
Result:

Mixed. Earned Honda some positive
brand impressions on #PinChat and
received lots of media coverage & PR.

Gained 531 new Followers, 300 RePins
Why?

Playful, inventive use of the platform

No ties to ROI
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
13
Grey Goose | Hotel Noir Cross-Channel Campaign



What:

Told seductive six-chapter story promoting
their latest brand of vodka, Cherry Noir,
through Pinterest and Instagram. Targeted
25-34 year old ‘early adopters’ of new
technology.

Commissioned four popular smartphone
photographers to take shots for each
chapter’s Instagram stream and share the
photos with their(250,000 collective)
personal followers.

TV and online commercial, heavy usage of
hashtags.
Result:

High engagement, increased website traffic

No formal numbers released
Why?

Cross-channel, kept fans coming back for
more, highly visual, interactive…..(the list
goes on)
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
14
New Features | Pinterest Introduces Secret Boards….Finally!


This is great news for brands

Collaboration

Getting approvals

Testing

Facebook tab applications
Things to note:

Can only have 3 Secret Boards at any
given time

Invite others to collaborate

If you publish the board, comments will be
visible

Once the board is published, it cannot be
unpublished

Creator holds all the cards, choose wisely
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
15
New Features | Business Pages

Enter your company name, instead of first & last name

Website verification – appears with a red checkbox next to it

Still possible for impersonators to verify a similar URL, but a good first step towards
eliminating ‘fake’ brand pages

New microsite with business case studies & best practices

Terms of service moving towards a more commercial usage of Pinterest
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
16
Is Pinterest the future of e-commerce?

Pin-it Buttons are
everywhere

Articles, products, videos

Gucci recently unveiled a
‘Pinnable’ banner ad

Spring Metrics launches
Pinterest module for ecommerce

Pin a product image in
exchange for an online
coupon
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
17
Pinterest & e-commerce | Zappos PinPointing

What:


Note:




Zappos introduced a service called
‘PinPointing’, which recommends Zappos
products based on Pinterest pins
Don’t necessarily feature Zappos products
Recommendations are not always accurate
or helpful
No formal partnership between Zappos and
Pinterest
Implications:


So far, has not significantly impacted sales
Signals one way Pinterest might try to
monetize in the future
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
18
Legal Concerns | What you need to know



Brands should only pin content their own or have license to use
Best Practices

Pin from the original source or permalink

Give credit to the content owner

Include a thoughtful pin description
Content owners can block ‘Pinning’ from their website (ex. Flickr)
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
19
Thank you,
Happy Pinning!
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.