Channel Report: Pinterest

1. Channel Report: Pinterest Michaela Strand | 11/13/12

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Do’s & Don’ts DON’T DO • Be aspirational and inspirational • Create subtle and creative boards that cover a wide range of topics • Be visual • Use high quality images • Be overly promotional • Re-create your entire product catalog • Affix price tags to your pins* • Forget your website

8. *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 Pinterestto “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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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 Re-Pins • Why? • Playful, inventive use of the platform • No ties to ROI

14. 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)

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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 e-commerce • Pin a product image in exchange for an online coupon

18. Pinterest & e-commerce | ZapposPinPointing • What: • Zappos introduced a service called ‘PinPointing’, which recommends Zappos products based on Pinterest pins • Note: • 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

19. 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)

20. Thank you, Happy Pinning!