Brands and Pinterest

Pinterest is now officially The Next Big Thing.  I'm getting about 5 follows a day, and about 10 re-pins.  (follow me here, if you want; this is probably my best board)

It's been fun watching it develop since I first wrote about it in December 2010.  Now it has over 10m registered users, and still has a very strong female bias.  It's a bit strange that something that really doesn't work for mobile - in terms of the pinning at least - should be the new, new thing, but it works very well on the desktop.

Brands are starting to use it - before Christmas I wrote about how Lands' End were using it for a competition, and now publishers are also getting in on the action.

From my experience most people use it as a bookmarking, scrap book service (see below), but brands are using it as a sharing service.  Since people are there looking for visual inspiration, supply them with yours, in an easy to use way.  It's easier to re-pin than pin (slightly), so brands are putting their own content up on Pinterest for people to find easily, rather than search for on their brand pages.

For example here's the Wall Street Journal's collection of Fashion Week pictures

& here's Newsweek's collection of Fashion Week photos

Props too for this collection from Newsweek:  Rick Santorum's Sweater Vests  This shows another part of Pinterest - use it to establish your credentials and taste.  It's good to know that Newsweek have spotted this about Rick Santorum!

Other examples:

Burberry

The US Army - includes boards like Chow, Homecoming and Humanitarian Relief

London restaurant chain Canteen

Etsy

Time Magazine - includes photography & classic covers

Travel Channel

Gap - Includes current collections, and 'Denim Icons'

Unicef

British brewer Saint

The publisher Quadrille Books

Universal Pictures - including individual boards for films like Do The Right Thing

A very good use by a pet adoption agency

Cath Kidston

With thanks to this 'Ultimate Guide' presentation by Michael Litman

What I think is really clever about Pinterest is that it works really well as a scrap book, and that's something that the internet desperately needed.  Yes, you've got Delicious, and Pinboard, but they are primarily for geeks (myself included).  Pinterest is aiming at the mass market, and seems to be succeeding.  But it's a complementary service. It's not going to kill anything else off, it's letting people save what they see online.  How did it take so long for this idea to take off?