by Daniele
10. February 2012 16:18
A few days ago I was talking to a friend about the potential of Pinterest.
I was in a “Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 mood”, going from Allegro to Maestoso, glorifying the role of inspiration in this (often visionless) world, singing the praises of visual content and colours and mood boards like a young and inspired Pavarotti, thrilled by the future of “social”.
My friend pulled a bored/ not impressed/ thinking-about-the-laundry kind of face, then said ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, to put a pin on a chicken casserole recipe doesn’t sound like the future of the Internet, to me’.
Chicken casseroles aside, Pinterest is an exploding phenomenon, which drives more traffic than YouTube, Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace (percentage of total referral traffic in January, according to a Shareaholic study), and counts 10m unique users. The platform’s user base is largely women (a 80% to 20% ratio), aged mainly between 25 and 44 (accounting for 55% of the group, 30% are 25-34, 25% are 35 – 44); therefore, it has been nicknamed “Tumblr for Ladiez” by Gizmodo’s Matt Buchanan.
And it is still in Beta. Wow.
Brands are starting to create accounts, collecting followers and inspiring images and videos from their catalogues and the Internet in general, to create an all-encompassing visual experience.
Bergdorf Goodman is one of the pioneers.
The brand came up with some smart online marketing moves to promote the expansion of its second floor shoe salon this fall.
From a Mashable article, published three days ago: ‘In addition to a heavy print campaign, the retailer develop an interactive shoe map of New York City. Instagram users were encouraged to upload geotagged photos of their shoes around prominent city landmarks with the hashtag #BGShoes to add to the map. Those that were taken in Manhattan appeared on the map; those from other boroughs flanked the edges. To date, 150 photos have been added to the map. The promotion has also generated 233 Facebook Likes, 185 tweets and 30 +1s — not bad for a campaign with such tight geographic constraints.’ The campaign involed Pinterest, heavily flanked by Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and an iPhone app, Today’s Shoe.
The Pinteresting part of the story is that every board includes items sold by the luxury department store as well as other, inspiring images and type of content. For instance, in the board “FALL TRENDS: In Living Color, Red-Alert” we can see red bags, red shoes and red dresses, but also red phone booths, red doors, and red vintage posters.
Check the other boards as well, they all feature products and other kind of images, in equal measure.
This could be a further step towards the shift from a “”ME ME ME and ME again” kind of attitude to a more subtle, elegant and inspiring way brands can use to reach the heart of their customers/ fans/ followers. Tumblr already showed the way, now Pinterest could turn this into reality.
London Web Agency Appnova – keep following us on Twitter @appnova and “like” us on Facebook for useful news and tasteful digressions about geeky stuff.