Pinterest Releases “Pinspiration Calendar”; Partners with Brands

Pinterest continued displaying its new-found support of brands early this month. Late last week, the popular social media site launched a “Pinspiration Calendar” just in time for the holiday season.

The interactive calendar features users and brands on Pinterest that pin “pinspirational” ideas for the holidays to their Pinterest boards. Each day a new user is added to the calendar. Clicking on the day opens up a new window that provides a description and a link to the user’s holiday boards.

For example, Babble is the featured user on Day 6. Babble is an online magazine for Parents and is extremely influential on Pinterest, with nearly 120,000 followers. Babble’s featured board is called “Why we Celebrate.” The board’s purpose is to inspire followers to pause from the holiday rush and reflect on what the holidays are truly about- friends and family. The pins center around family memories and traditions. There are currently nearly 64,000 followers of the board and over 100 pins.

Pinterest Takes on CPG Brands

Perhaps the most interesting part of the calendar for marketers is the fact that top CPG brands are included as featured pinners. Three well-known CPG brands, Anthropology, TOMS, and Pottery Barn, have already been included. Pottery Barn used the calendar to promote their Christmas decor on a board dedicated to a nostalgic Christmas. The pins display photos of traditional holiday decorations sold by Pottery Barn and link directly to the product on potterybarn.com. The board has nearly 70,000 followers and over 60 products are pinned. Since becoming a part of the calendar, it’s likely that Pottery Barn has seen a huge drive in online traffic to their e-commerce site, as well as online sales.

What is so exciting about these Brand Partnerships?

The introduction of CPG brands in the calendar is a sign that Pinterest understands its importance in influencing consumer purchase decisions. Pinterest likely developed this calendar as a sponsorship/content integration opportunity for brands, and those that reached out with interest and made the most sense contextually were featured at a cost. This is a big step for a site that has typically avoided sponsorship and marketing opportunities on the site. It is very likely that we will see additional opportunities from the site in the future, and I think this will be necessary to ensure the social network succeeds in the future.

-Bryan Nagy