Don’t Call Pinterest a Social Network Says Top Exec
On the second day of the WWD Retail and Apparel CEO Summit, Pinterest’s Tim Kendall set the record straight about the visual discovery tool: “I think one of the biggest misconceptions about Pinterest is that we are a social network, and we are not a social network,” he said. “People do not go to Pinterest to find out what their friends and family are doing. It’s not about the past, it’s not even about the moment. It’s about the future. If you look at social networks, it’s all about what my friends did last night or what I did last weekend. Pinterest is about an individual figuring out what they want to do with their life, do with their futures.”
Of course, Kendall reviewed the familiar — albeit still impressive — facts about Pinterest’s membership. Over 100 million active users, about 33 million of which are millennials. This might be half of the 75 million millennials which Facebook boasts, but Kendall pointed out the crucial difference that Pinterest’s users are two to three times more likely to buy something. “They aren’t looking at their friends’ pictures,” he noted.
And apparently the future includes shopping! Earlier this year, the company launched the Buyable Pins functionality, which allows its iPhone and iPad wielding followers to shop directly through the interface. But that’s not all. Kendall also revealed for the first time that Pinterest starts to see trends and customer intent before anyone else. “Christmas on Pinterest starts to scale up four months before the holidays,” he said. “You don’t start to see that scale up in search until a month before. We also see a similar trend for fall fashion.”
It’s an interesting fact with massive implications. Pinterest’s ability to spot consumer trends an entire season before product hits stores could provide crucial, previously unavailable marketing data for merchandise planning and advertising buys. It could also help consumer designers who may want to take a temperature reading for future collections.
As technology and data continue to merge, Kendall suggested that retailers or fashion brands that want to get in on the conversation focus on one thing: “Your first priority should not be just ‘setting up a profile’ for your company. Your first priority should be adding the official Pin-It button to your site. It allows us to service the right users and really capture all of those insights.”
Watch out Amazon, Pinterest is coming for you.
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