Brands on Pinterest: a drop of sense in the sea of images

Pinterest managed to establish a new trend in the supply of information that is already taken up with Facebook audience of more than a billion users, rental service Airbnb and world auction eBay. The successes of the fastest growing social network attracted attention of brands – without wasting time, brands create their own pages on the new platform and interact with consumers in the form preferable for site features.

Taken into account the fact that the format of the platform is hard enough – photos and text limit – brands have to show the wonders of ingenuity to stand out their campaign from the endless “boards”. This article describes the most striking examples of campaigns on Pinterest, beyond simply pictures adding.

Social platform that has evolved from a simple shopping application Tote, was launched in beta in March 2010 and within a few months showed a record high results. In its article Fast Company magazine writes thatBy August 2012, the site had 25 million unique monthly users, almost 20 times the number it had the same month a year earlier, and had become the fastest standalone social networking site to reach 20 million visitors, according to comScore data.

In fact, the basic idea of Pinterest is to craze all girls – collecting candy wrappers and postcards, small things, beautiful photos and dream houses, portraits of princes and various clippings from magazines. Previously, all these things were pasted in thick notebooks and diaries or evolved into precious box and now grown girls simply “AD" or it's better to say "PIN" dreams on virtual wall. Confirmation of the theory of a "girlish nature”on Pinterest is the fact that the vast majority of Internet users – women (79%) and despite the fact that usually the new platform at first “colonize” men. And brands must take it into account – even if their product does not fit into the category of women's products, they need to come up with approaches that affect delicate feminine soul.

Most promotions on Pinterest follow to the scheme “pin to win”, but some do manage with creative approach to break out of this “vicious circle”. Below, are considered the main trends of promotion possible on Pinterest.

Out of Pinterest to the real world and back

Some brands on Pinterest offer users to share their real-world experience. So, in April of this year, Honda brand launched an initiative called in which selected five active users on Pinterest and offered them to realize all what they “pint” on their “boards” within a day. Brand get to each of the lucky ones to $ 500 they bring pictures to reality and asked them to report on the results of 24-hour mission.

Another car brand, Volvo, offered users to make a set for a perfect trip – as a gift to the author of the best brand board, Volvo organized trip of his dreams (4 days new Volvo S50 T5 was at the disposal of the winner).

Kotex has organized another interesting project, based on hobbies of active Pinterest users. Brand chose 50 women authors of the most interesting boards with various gizmos and asked the designer to recreate these things on photos, adding to their image design Kotex brightness. Photos of design objects were placed on the brand board and participants could declare their desire to receive the gift, “pinning” appropriate image. Kotex sent 50 greeting parcels and almost all the participants reported about receiving, downloading photos and send content to social platforms. More than 700,000 “impressions” (comments, Likes, posts) – is a good result for the company on a relatively new platform.

Philips also recently launched promotion, offering users of the network to say . Participants of the initiative #pinyourcity must create boards with photos of their cities, proving thatthere are plenty of cozy nook sin urban jungle. The jury will choose the most inspiring authors, which Philips will award prizes.

Social problems and healthy lifestyle

A number of organizations and brands in their campaigns departs from the scheme “pin to win”, bringing to their promotion element of social consciousness. In particular, UNISEF launched on Pinterest initiative called “Really want this”, the hero was a 13-year-old African boy Ami Musa from Sierra Leone – the purpose of the campaign was to draw public attention to the problems of poverty and an acute shortage basic necessities to African countries. On the “board” you can see all six photos that symbolize what African children in need – including food, clean water, clothing, hygiene, and education – below the images you can find a link to a page that collects donations for the purchase of goods. African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) has also launched a campaign with a “human face” – it describes the story of 13 year old mother from Tanzania. But in contrast to the previous project, this initiative is purely informative in nature, without a call to immediate action.

Walmart offered Pinterest users create “board” of products that inspire them in eco lifestyle. Each collection had to use 10 items that can be purchased in the retailer stores (pictures can be taken from walmart.com) – and do not forget to use the hash tag WalmartGreen. Authors of the most interesting boards were given $ 500. Pinterest itself does everything possible its users are not “infected” bad habits – so, the network has banned to “pin” pro-anorexic photos and pictures that promote an unhealthy diet.

Online-service Confused.com, which helps to compare the services of companies offering car insurance liability, held a competition on the theme of high heels. The initiative encourages users – of course, women – that it's very dangerous to drive in high heels, because in such shoes is difficult to cope with the pedals. The service offered ladies to share photos of their most extravagant high heeled shoes – the winner of the contest received a pair of fashion shoes.

Coverage

Pinterest is a decent platform for “live” coverage of various events. So, for example, Oscar de la Renta has chosen this service for sharing photos with a display of – pictures from backstage and the catwalk appeared on the brand team board almost instantly. The idea is very similar to Tweetshow, held by Burberry on Twitter last year – with the microblogging service brand led online photo translation of its show at September's London Fashion Week in 2011. Obviously, on Pinterest “live” photo essay format looks more organic than on any other “content” social platform (e.g. Twitter). Apparently, this trend will be actively developed on Pinterest in the near future – there is already possible to find reports with and ceremony of the year.

Migrating users to other platforms

This spring, launched the activation, which was to involve a lot of users, but the implementation was heavy – not so much for the idea, but because of the technical “pitfalls”. Despite the fact wanting to perform a task (collect on other sites Peugeot.com.pa and facebook / Peugeot.Panama puzzle parts) there were a lot, some were just not able to complete the mission - just did not understand how to search for images and transfer found photos on Pinterest. In fact, the idea was very good – let users cause to visit the other brand social platforms – scale and multi-stage of the mission “sapped the foundation” of the campaign. Pinterest promotes simplicity and too complex approaches are failed.

Creating a new visual form for Pinterest-boards, banners transformation

Japanese clothing brand UNIQLO decided to add some dynamics to the ranks of boring photos on Pinterest - brand created a vivid graphics that almost “blew” Pinterest, in the best sense of the word. This initiative points to an acute shortage of “live” component on “boards” - from prolonged viewing of all these countless windows, multi-level images on wide boards can simply be dizzy, and some dynamics Pinterest does not hurt.

Gucci, in turn, did not to improve the platform, and thought about the integration of other formats – including online-advertising on Pinterest. So fashion giant created ad banners with the button “Pin it”, so that everyone could share their favorite picture on the advertising platform to gain weight. In the future, users should be able to “pin” everything.

Reviewing marketing and image campaigns of local and global brands and organizations on Pinterest, below are formulated five major rules that must be followed by a brand, if it wants to succeed on the platform:

1. Follow simplicity. Multilevel complex actions are not for Pinterest - the simpler your idea, the better is.

2. Step away from “pin-to-win”. Keep the balance between simplicity and intelligence. It's boring just sitting and "pin" any pictures – think of a decent idea, worthwhile job that could be done in the real world, and then publish report on Pinterest.

3. Choose a narrow topic and offer users to work within it. For example, Guess that gave its fans a task to create a “board” on one of the four spring flowers.

4. Think about benefits.

5. Reward active users.

Now such platforms like Pinterest thrive. People prefer to receive the information, not in words, but through visual forms. Such media can both think less, and won't cause too much information overload.