Update: four months later, content marketing is on its way to take off
“As marketers fight to engage with users [and] readers in a noisy, competitive world, marketers have all become publishers,” — Jed Hartman, group publisher of Time Inc. news and business, with oversight for Fortune via “Fortune will sell original editorial content to advertisers for up to $1 million”, AdAge
Day two after reading this and I am still confused. With the brand equity Pinterest has, they certainly could have been more creative at their first attempt to get closer to brands.
Pinterest is a goldmine for brands and advertisers.
- 80% are women, 50% have kids and likely to live in a Midwestern state (read: Walmart demo = cha-ching)
- Pinterest users who shop online follow 9.3 retailers while FB users follow 6.9% retailers and Twitter users follow 8.5%
- CTA pin sees an 80% increase in engagement
- Referrals spend 70% more money, also spend 10% more
The astounding stats go on and on…but they chose Business Pages and widgets?
I mean. Really?
From a brand perspective, what is the value proposition of having another business page to maintain? Business pages aren’t billboards on the Internet. Internet users expect more and paying Pinterest to add to workflows with sentiment, reputation and click-throughs as the ROI is backwards. And don’t get me started on widgets. What is this, 2001? Moving forward, major brands are becoming publishers, media companies, moving away from traditional ad models.
Pinterest is rich with content. If products like Pulse, the joke of the tech circle Mashable is experimenting and even brands like Coke and Nike can figure out content strategy to drive revenue, I’d assume the very smart people at Pinterest should be able to, too. Oh, well.
What a huge bummer.
(Top image screen shot of AdAge article found here)
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