Sketch Loves... Pinterest

Wow. Having discovered Pinterest in recent months, we are now officially hooked.

It’s a visual catalogue of everything you've ever wanted on the web, neatly organised into boards; your boards, and others’ boards – sharing and discovering with others that have similar interests.

For anyone who doesn’t know, here’s a nice little breakdown of how it works – credit goes to thelinkbuilders.com for this one:

1) When someone likes an image on a website they can pin it back to a board they’ve created on the Pinterest site. These boards can be named anything but fall under categories designated by the Pinterest team, like weddings/events, home décor, travel, etc.

2) Individuals can see pins by people whose boards they are following, or by searching through the most popular pins (most repinned), by category, by search term, or by price. If a user has typed in the price of the object in the comment area it will also appear on the top left corner of the image (this only happens when the dollar sign is typed into the comment area. No other money symbol – like € or £ – makes the price appear on the pin).

3) Every image has a comment area, link, and options to like or repin. Viewers can visit the site that housed the original image by clicking on the image or on the URL in the top right corner of the image.

On our Pinterest account we’ve currently got 8 boards. As expected, they are mostly events and design led, but the opportunities for inspiration are endless:

But who else is using Pinterest? Back in February, US agency Modena put some stats together that help create a picture of who’s pinning:

As the infographic illustrates, there are plenty of brand using Pinterest. But what are they doing there? There’s obvious SEO potential, and an opportunity to display more ‘stuff’ from your site, but users aren’t always going to want to engage with that kind of content. So clever brands make boards that are insightful and reflect the interests of their audience.

ASOS, for example, has 23 boards ranging from Christmas, beauty, current trends and competitions.

But not all brands fit the Pinterest format, forcing them to think outside the box. Take Coca Cola, who ask users to help them discover ‘moments of happiness ’ by sharing photos. A little soppy perhaps, but all in all, Pinterest...we like you.

Why we are LOVING Pinterest...

We live in an increasingly visual age where every second millions of people are documenting their lives through photos and uploading them to social networking sites. We seem obsessed with not only sharing pictures and videos from yesterdays BBQ in the park and Mia’s 1st Birthday Party, but capturing every bit of life we love from the ‘cute’ T-shirt we just saw at the market, to the tasty cakes that have just been delivered to the office.  So with this visual sharing explosion, is Pinterest the answer when communicating our lives in videos and pictures? Is Pinterest the latest fad or will it become the latest must have online marketing tool for your brand?


The low down. So what is Pinterest and how does it work?
Pinterest is a pin board style, social photo sharing website which allows its users to ‘pin’ images of ‘interest’ to the site using videos, photos or discussions. These ‘pins’ can then be organised into individual boards much like a virtual scrap book. Anything can be found from ‘design I love’ to ‘stunning holiday destinations’.  It’s simple to use as ‘pins’ can be uploaded by the individual or 'pinned' directly from websites and blogs using a handy ‘pin it’ plug in. Linked with Facebook and twitter, users can like a ‘pin’, or, much like a re-tweet, ‘repin’ a ‘pin’ to their pinboard thus continuing the image sharing journey.


So how can Pinterest work for my brand?
They say that a picture paints and thousand words and what better way to shout about your new product or latest experiential advertising campaign then with an image that says it all. With the ‘pin it’ plug in, an image can be pinned in a matter of seconds with a witty or cliff hanger style caption if desired. 
It’s not just us that agrees that Pinterest is the way forward. Several brands have lead the with Pinterest digital campaigns. Kotex’s ‘Woman’s Inspiration Day’ campaign featured personalised gifts that were sent out to 50 inspiring women whom they located on Pinterest. These gifts were created from inspiration from their Pinterest boards and sent them a personalised gift (with Kotex included). All the women had to do to receive their exclusive gift was to repin their gift. Nearly 100% of women posted about their gift on Facebook, Pinteret and Twitter. From the 50 gifts sent out, the Brand achieved 2,284 interactions and 694,853 total impressions. 

Fashion brand Guess has also jumped on the bandwagon with their “Guess my colour Inspiration” by challenging its fans to create boards based on one of  four spring denim colours: “Noir Teal,” “Hot House Orange,” “Red Hot Overdue” and “New Plum Light.” Participants were told to title their boards “Guess My Color Inspiration” and re-pin their colour ambassador image with at least five more colour images. The four winners were selected by style bloggers. 

Guess 'Colour Me Inspired' campaign

Even 'Mad Men' is reaching out to its audience through a retro 60’s styled Pinterest board promoting the release of the hotly anticipated fifth season of the show.

The Mad Men Pinterest board

Pinterest seems to be on it's way to becoming a huge hit with the number of unique visitors to the site growing by 886% in just 6 months, with over 16.23 million users (via Branding Magazine).


What better way to shout about your brand or product then letting your consumer do it for you? Linking with Facebook and Twitter its makes it incredibly easy to share about the things you like with countless others to. Go on, try it- we're sure you'll become just as addicted as we are! 
Follow us at http://pinterest.com/sketchevents/

http://www.flowtown.com/blog/why-is-pinterest-so-addictive