Using Pinterest to Market your Brand

I’ve posted tips and tricks on how to use Pinterest, best practices for using it with your business, and given examples of brands doing it right, but today I’ll go over some brands that are using it for great marketing campaigns. While reading through these, take a look at some similarities between their brand and yours, and see if you can come up with some creative ways to make it your own. Maybe they’ll even jog some ideas that you can create yourself.

Kotex

Kotex claims it is the first brand to use Pinterest in a marketing campaign, and I think they can rightfully claim this title.

Kotex chose 50 of the top influential women on Pinterest and took a look at what types of pins they posted. Based on this, Kotex created personalized gifts for each woman. For example, for one woman they personalized a vase with designs she typically posted on her Pinterest. Kotex then took photographs of each gift and sent the photos to the women.  The personalized gifts were then mailed to the women who pinned the photo. Included in the package was the personalized gift and a box of Kotex tampons.

The women were enthused about the gifts. All fifty women repinned the photos, and all fifty received the gift. The women posted photos of the gifts across various social media outlets, including Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. More than 2,200 posts were made from the fifty gifts, and the company is benefiting from the press generated around the innovative Pinterest campaign.

Better  Homes and Gardens

Better Homes and Gardens offers another unique marketing campaign on Pinterest, this one being a contest. Followers on Pinterests were notified via pin on BHG’s Pinterest profile of a contest running on the social media site. Users could win $5,000 in prizes for their dream home.

To win, users had to create and Better Homes and Gardens board on their Pinterest profile and pin at least ten images from BHG.com onto the board. Each pin had to describe the item and why the loved it and would like it in their home. Then, users had to send a link to their board on the Better  Homes and Gardens Facebook page. A special tab on the page was devoted to this contest. Upon submitting their board, users had to Like the Facebook page and had the option to follow the Better Homes and Gardens boards on Pinterest.

This truly is a multi-platform marketing campaign, and I love the interactivity and cross traffic that it required.

Peugeot Panama

French car maker Peugeot created a fun marketing campaign revolving around their Pinterest boards. Several boards on Peugeot’s Pinterest page were uploaded incomplete, marked with red “MISSING” text over a watermarked image.

Users were asked to find the images that would fill in these puzzles. These images were scattered across the Peugeot Panama Facebook page and website. The first five users to find all of the puzzle pieces of a board, pin the missing images to their Pinterest profile, and send Peugeot a link won a prize.

This is a great contest, as it is engaging and makes users run through content on Peugeot’s Facebook page and website. I’m sure many ran across information on Peugeot that they never knew, and the contest likely increased brand favorability.

Lands’ End Canvas

Lands’ End is using Pinterest to host a contest  for their more upscale Canvas line similar to the one Better  Homes and Gardens ran. In Lands’ End Canvas’ Spring Fling Pinning Contest, users follow Lands’ End Canvas’ Pinterest page and create a board of their own named “Lands End Canvas Spring Fling Musts Pin it to Win it”. On this board, users pin 10-20 of their favorite spring items from Lands’ End. Each item is given the hashtag#landsendcanvas, and users have the option to explain where these items could take them on spring break.

Users then send a link to their boards to an email address, where the winners will be selected to win $250 towards spring clothing from Lands’ End Canvas.

Wall Street Journal

While not necessarily a marketing campaign, the Wall Street Journal used Pinterest to cover New York Fashion Week. They used it to enhance their coverage of the event, and it allowed users to interact with each individual photograph posted.  For those following the board created by the Wall Street Journal, it allowed for something simlar to an RSS feed, only in photographs. While some receive their news updates via Twitter (a great way to get the latest breaking news if you aren’t already doing so yourself), these users received their news updates about the New York Fashion Week via Pinterest.

So, there are already some brands using Pinterest in some creative ways. It will be interesting to see how additional brands use the tool to market to their consumers.

Are you part of a small business using Pinterest to market your company? Let me know and we can highlight you in a future article!

-Bryan Nagy