Advertisers are the toughest demographic to market to. So, to get the industry's eyeballs with a Pinterest-branded campaign that would achieve 3,297 objectives, we had to get crafty. Top of the agenda? Bring the Pinterest sexy back by teaching advertising creatives how we're different from other platforms, and showcasing the creative canvas they have to play with.
A timely and topical subject, we chose to dig into the gender & diversity gap in the workplace. From there, 'Right the Ratio' was born; a series of inspiring, helpful & actionable ideas, endemic traits of the platform. The campaign featured advice from seven kickass women in the industry, all with a unique perspective and story to tell.
Rather than creating a me-too campaign, we dug deep into emulating what our platform stands for through tangible micro-actions, conference room print outs, steps to ask for a raise, etc. And we even snuck in a little creative tech fun/product hack to drive organic discovery.
Role: concept lead, art direction & copy development. Worked in partnership with Grow Agency to develop the campaign identity & video interviews.
November 2016 - July 2017
Pre-Pinterest, I built a ton of custom, channel-specific campaigns with tiny budgets and was fluent in influencer. So four months into my gig as a Creative Strategist, I jumped at the offer to build Pinterest's first custom content production arm, dubbed Pin Collective.
Between the press announcement in October and May, the Pin Collective churned out bespoke Pinterest campaigns for Glad, L’Oreal, Target, Dunkin Donuts, HP, Old Spice (W+K) and more via a growing network of 40+ creators including freelance creatives, influencers, production shops & publishers.
Role: I wore many hats getting Pin Collective off the ground as a one man show, including Creative Director/collaborator (depending on the talent), Producer, Copywriter & Strategist. More work examples can be found here.
July 2017 - Present
Pin Collective quickly built street cred within Pinterest as an easy way to get brands using stronger, smarter creative for their promoted campaigns, with killer results as proof. But a high-touch, white glove service approach wasn't scalable.
Enter: Pin Collective 2.0. A new way for businesses to work with top content creators on Pinterest via a custom platform built by Popular Pays, housing Pinterest's unique network of talent. This new white-labeled solution enables brands of all sizes to develop custom content for Pinterest in as little as 10-14 days.
As of August 1st, brands now submit a creative brief directly into the platform, review “applications” from creators who want to work on the project. Once brands pick a creator, all communication happens directly on the platform.
Here's a look at Adidas Originals work/process, the first brand to test the new offering.
Role (Creative): Act as Creative Director, overseeing all creative output, supporting Creative Strategists using the platform and collaborating directly with talent on higher-profile projects. Continue to manage, grow and nurture Pin Collective network.
Role (Process): Vetted echnology partners, lead the start of the partnership from the Pinterest side, then oversaw a producer/product manager to build the live offering, training materials, comms, etc.
Circa 2013, big box retailers were struggling and a focus group went so far as to say Banana Republic was like their weird cat lady aunt...Challenge: Make Banana Republic Great Again.
Shortly after I joined, Banana enlisted a new CCO, who understood what it meant to be relevant with Millennials, how they shopped and the role social played in the process. Within weeks, I relocated to NYC to re-build the heritage brand through authentic, consistent storytelling alongside the design team.
Two years of creating content at the speed of culture, testing all the social ad products, four NYFW shows, and a team of influential people genuinely rooting for/shouting about the brand, we moved Banana Republic into Forbes' '2015 Millennials Top 10 List.' Take that cat lady haters.
Role: Created, evolved (and protected) the brand’s social voice/visual tone. Developed all content in-house with small creative team, owned influencer relationships and drove publisher partnerships. Concept & strategy lead for organic/paid social campaigns under the brand Creative Director’s vision.
Digital Press: Twitter IPO, HotDudesReading Collab, AdAge Carousel Beta, DigiDay - Instagram video rollout
Fashion Press: HuffPo, GoPro on Marissa Webb's head at NYFW
In similar fashion to Old Spice's 2014 Momsong campaign, Wieden + Kennedy was cooking up something new, poking fun with teenage boy and mom-targeted advertising—by parodying both in ridiculously hyperbolic fashion, with Pinterest in on the joke.
Tasked with uncovering Pinterest content creators who ruled the DIY space, the Pin Collective collaborated with Erica Chan Hoffman of Honestly WTF to develop a custom Pinterest campaign, using platform insights to fuel relevant creative.
Old Spice ran a series of Pins included their own creative and assets from HonestlyWTF in a promoted campaign, a first for the brand on Pinterest.
Role: sourced talent, worked in partnership with W+K/Creative Strategist to offer platform insights to inform DIY projects, and collaborated with Honestly WTF on concepts, best-practices and execution.
Glad Press'n Seal is a well-known household staple amongst 40-65 year olds, though with the Millennial audience, there was limited product awareness, and an opportunity to educate on how Glad Press'n Seal could fit into daily Millennial life.
Via the Pin Collective, Glad enlisted creators Matt Crump & Lucy Litman to develop a bright, playful campaign dubbed "Save Our Snacks" to show how Glad can be used to keep Millennial pinners' food fresh, taking snacks from sad to happy.
Role: sourced talent recommendations, collaborated closely with creators to develop campaign concepts and acted as liaison between Partner & talent.
One of the platforms biggest longtime partners, Target has been using Pinterest as a key component of its marketing strategy for several years. Back-to-school campaigns are nothing new, and the brand challenged Pinterest's Creative Strategy team to try something news.
Via the Pin Collective, we developed the 'Motherboard' aka a first-of-its-kind content hub (board) filled with inspiring, yet actionable ideas from five real moms, containing everything a mom needs to help send her kid off to college in style.
This campaign was the biggest custom Pinterest production for Target to-date and was a unique collaborative effort between Pinterest, Target's creative team & members of the Pin Collective.
Role: Concept development, sourcing the (unique) talent, partnering alongside talent to develop insights-informed ideas & art direction/platform expertise on set with Target team.
New York Fashion Week is notoriously a crowded time. Consumers at home are equally as important as the editors, buyers and influencers attending the shows. And brands are continuously trying to outdo one another on the innovation front. Press garnered from unique experiences was as important as the debut of a collection itself, especially for high street brands. So each season, we showed up big (on a tiny budget, no less). And I played the role of conductor. Highlights outlined below.
February 2015: we hosted an Instameet, built within the presentation itself. Using bubbling trends from the community to inform our design, we created a space with as many gram-worthy photo opps as possible. A few of which included neon sign hung perfectly above a sofa, decals on the bathroom mirrors & entryway steps, printed "like" signs to hold next to coveted items, and for the audience at home, we partnered with Hillary Kerr and WhoWhatWear to host the first live fan-directed fashion show on Twitter.
Results: In addition to #thenewBR becoming a nationally trending Twitter topic, the campaign generated 189.6 M impressions, was talked about 4.5k times and helped increase brand sentiment by 27%.
February '16: With consumers' growing demand for instant gratification, Banana Republic was among the first 10 brands to execute a 'see-now-buy-now' offering, exclusively available for purchase through Instagram during the show. Any items to pop up on our feed marked with an IG "like" button were available for purchase straight away. We sold through the preview pieces immediately to fans watching along at home, and tapped influencers to spread our reach in real-time. But the biggest hit at the fashion week presentation was bringing Giphy & Triller backstage to capture content for the brand, and encourage photo/boomerang/gif/music video opps with models and influencers before the show.
Results: The GIFs alone generated 850MM impressions and were trending on Giphy's homepage for the days following (we built a shotlist of emotions/reactions to capture backstage that fell in line with organic use of GIFs).
Role: Concepted all experiential elements & digi-broadcasting. In real-time, captured content, art directed & managed photographers. Wrote copy on the fly, managed a war room back stage, and most importantly, stayed cool as a cucumber under pressure.
HP dominates the majority of the home printer market, and upping usage of ink cartridges is among their top business priorities. While the brand isn't a seemingly obvious fit for Pinterest, platform insights showed there was an 800% uptick in searches for “free printable art” and a clear opportunity to develop (and widely distribute) more artwork.
Via the Pin Collective, HP enlisted four artists to develop over 40 pieces of artwork that could be printed directly from Pinterest on a home printer. To inform the artwork themes and styles, we used trending color palettes and home decor themes, showing the artwork in-situ via promoted Pins that drove to a board housing all of the artwork with instructions to print directly from the platform.
Role: Role: Concept development, sourcing talent, creative oversight/direction across artists to create a cohesive look & feel. Partnership with product to create a custom experience within the platform.
