Pinteresting Brands
Earlier this year I came across Pinterest – an online ‘scrap book’ that lets you organise and share images (and now videos) you find on the web. It instantly appealed to me as a ‘digital hoarder / collector / curator’ as a way to visually organise and display ideas for events, work presentations, home decoration ideas, even destinations I wanted to travel to in future.
As with any new online service the next question and thought that runs through my mind is “How will brands begin to use this?”. I could see there would be certain brands that would fall into Pinterest easily and would be a natural fit amongst the growing online community. Australian stationery brand kikki.K, who was the first brand I noticed using Pinterest, is one such company that was made for a community like Pinterest.
kikki.K was always going to fit in seamlessly. Take a look through Pinterest and you’ll soon see why – if it is twee, crafty, street style, decor or design focused it will be on Pinterest. kikki.K took their product and gave it to a community that was going to adore it (as they do in many other channels already) and opened themselves up to a global audience – many of which are obsessed with “pretty” stationery.
kikki.K owner and founder Kristina Karlsson said the team instantly fell in love with Pinterest’s ease of use and clean visual layout and wants kikki.K’s presence on the site to be visually inspiring, motivating and useful.
“Our brand values are very consistent with Pinterest in that we both are passionate about helping people organise their ideas and inspiration in stylish and creative ways,” she said. “We noticed that Pinterest users were already pinning kikki.K products and styling images to their boards, so it just made sense for us to start contributing to the community and adding to the conversation.”
“Pinterest has given us the opportunity to start building a community around people who share the same passions we do and participate in those spaces in a strikingly visual way. We’ve integrated the Pinterest ‘Follow’ and ‘Pin it’ badges onto our site, to encourage stationery lovers to experience and share our brand in a fresh way. It’s interesting for us to track those products which are being pinned more heavily than others to see which products and interests will rise in this space.”
Brands that could be instantly pinteresting
Like any social media network it isn’t “one size fits all”. Just because everyone is jumping on the Facebook and Twitter bandwagon doesn’t mean your company/brand/business has to as well. It is about what is going to work for you. That’s why for some Pinterest will be the best fit, for others it won’t. So what kind of brands will be a duck to water in the land of Pinterest?
- Fashion
- Beauty
- Homewares / Interior Design
- Food / Restaurants
- Graphic design
- Travel / Tourism
- Architecture
- Event service providers (weddings, christenings etc)
Of course, it is still a new online community and is going to be used in many ways. How it is used is up to the individual and the potential is only as good as the idea!
Who else is doing it well?
- TED. That’s right – TED as in TED Videos. They are using the service to curate examples of Ads Worth Spreading. In a digital sea of ‘pins’ of highly stylised photos, motivational quotes, photos of food, puppies and everything cute it was refreshing to see Pinterest being used in this way.
- Traveller’s Point – This travel guide is using Pinterest to curate lists of desired destinations and exotic locations.
- Project82 – hand-selected interior design store
Stay tuned for the next installment where I’ll chat about Pinterest 101 – How to get started and “what is pinning?”
Yours in happy pinning,
Justine.
