Pinterest has great potential for ad agencies: storyboards, branding strategies, concept ideas, campaign ideas, design ideas, even organizing agency pitches.
Time Magazine named Pinterest one of the top 50 websites for 2011. It is one of the hottest new social media sites with enduring specialties that qualifies it as the next ‘Twitter.’ Its value through venture financing has soared from $40 million to over $200 million in only a few months.
Pinterest (pronounced to rhyme with interest) is a vision board-styled social photo sharing website and app where users can create and manage theme-based image collections. The mission statement of Pinterest is to connect everyone in the world through shared tastes and the “things” they find interesting. Wikipedia
A site like Pinterest helps provide a place for discovery, saving and sharing.
Pinterest is like a giant scrapbook of ideas. When you find things of interest, this new platform allows you to upload those images as Pins and place them on customized , themed Boards and organize and share them on any topic that you choose. Others can follow your Boards and add comments. You can also allow them to post to your boards.
A ‘Pinterest Picture’ is worth 1000 words.
People tend to be “eye-minded”. I think this is one of the primary reasons this site has become so popular.
Studies by educational researchers suggest that approximately 83% of human learning occurs visually.
There is a soothing quality in using Pinterest.
Once you spend some time understanding how it works you’ll find it fun and very addictive. I’ve personally spent hours on it.
Here is a listing of my boards, which include some that are business related and some that are personal:
- Advertising
- Advertising Agencies’ Offices
- Books For Ad Agency New Business
- Home Decor
- Home Office
- Horses
- Houseboats
- My Travels
- Photography
Pinterest is still far behind site visitors comparative to Facebook, but it is making up for it in the amount of time spent on the site. An incredible 88.3 minutes was spent in November, according to comScore. This number is third only to Facebook (394 minutes) and Tumblr (141.7 minutes) and is also twice the amount of time that the average user spends on Twitter and 10 times the time spent on Google +.
Here are a some ideas on how to use Pinterest for your agency:
- Showcase your agency’s brand in a unique way
- Great potential for internal use with your agency’s creative teams – storyboards, branding strategies, concept ideas, campaign ideas, design ideas, even organizing agency pitches
- Enhance visual thinking and planning
- It has important potential for your clients’ social media marketing mix
- A great way to keep tabs on what is hot
- Potential for greater SEO (you can embed Pinterest to your agency’s website or blog)
- Organize areas of focus of the agency – keep up and share what is hot within your agency niche or industry focus
- Interact with your audience by testing campaign ideas and concepts
To help you get started I recommend Rob Lammie’s a Pinterest: A Beginner’s Guide to the Hot New Social Network
Please email me if you need an invitation to Pinterest or would like to submit your agency’s photo to the Advertising Agencies’ Offices Board.
Great article! I’ve used pinterest to get ideas for decorating, book recommendations, etc.. It’s fun to see how fast it is growing!
Pinterest will definitely be of benefit to agency clients. It’s good that you are using it personally to familiarize yourself with its potential. Give my regards to Peter and the rest of the crew at Maris West Baker.