Pinterest…Where Are All The brands?

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After having launched just over two years ago, Pinterest is increasingly becoming integrated into our social vocabulary. True, the demographic still skews older and female, and the launch might not have been as buzzed about as other social platforms such as Foursquare, but the growth rate and amount of time spent onsite is staggering. By now this isn’t a secret to consumers or brand advertisers, so why aren’t brands effectively leveraging Pinterest or incorporating the platform into their digital marketing strategy? In the 25 months since it’s inception, Pinterest has gone from generating 1% to 17% of social media revenue. This still pales in comparison to Facebook’s 82%, but it dwarfs Twitter’s 1% and if other social platforms have taught us anything, it will likely continue to grow at a rapid rate. This only further begs the question – “Where are all the brands?”

Currently the top brand on Pinterest is Perfect Palette, a wedding blog providing color palette recommendations for brides-to-be. Perfect Palette has almost 250,000 followers while the next brands are a distant second. Real Simple and HGTV have 100,000 and 50,000 brand followers respectively. This is a drop in the bucket when compared to the number of followers the top brands on Facebook had amassed after two years.

Take Procter and Gamble for example. With brands like Tide, Febreze, Pampers and Swiffer clearly targeting women as their core demographic, Pinterest presents the perfect platform through which to promote brand advocacy, grow affinity and inspire purchase. The potential to harness communal value, then using it to generate momentum behind a product is tremendous. Add to that, Facebook and Twitter integration points and you have the ability as a brand advertiser, to maximize impact and exposure across multiple social touchpoints.

Buyers referred from Pinterest are 10% more likely to buy something and spend 10% more on average than visitors who arrive from other social networks. Pinterest takes the best of Facebook and creates a simple amalgamation of social features. Sleek design and nice visuals coupled with brief captions, provide the ideal type of platform to host a variety of indirect advertising rarely used as effectively. To further validate this, a branded pin without price is twice as likely to be shared than the same pin with a price. Right now one of the most liked and re-pinnned items on Pinterest is a bra with iPhone pocket aptly named the Joey Bra.  An end user on Pinterest can not only like or repin the bra, but they can also click-through to purchase on the brand’s site.

JoeyBra featured on Pinterest

JoeyBra site, linked to from Pinterest

JoeyBra site, linked to from Pinterest

It’s only a matter of time before an influx of brands bombard Pinterest, similar to the way they did Facebook. With that in mind, it’s prime time for marketers to capitalize on the lack of clutter. A smart brand would make Pinterest a key component in its social strategy.  A highly visual integrated campaign, leveraging the connectivity with Facebook and Twitter to share out content from Pinterest and then link back to it, would be ideal. The way Pinterest lends itself to recommendations and the ease at which those recommendations can be shared while closing the loop to purchase, is an example of the functionality and UI so many other platforms are trying to create or evolve to. That said, at least for now we can appreciate Pinterest for what it is, while at the same time, preparing for what’s to come.

SXSW Diaries Part 1: Key Takeaways from SXSW Interactive Trade Show 2012

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I am back in NYC and better than ever after seven exhausting 18- hour plus days at SXSW. The show was a smashing success and there are a number of key takeaways I want to share with other companies, agencies and brands looking to throw a party, exhibit at a booth or employ guerilla-marketing tactics in and around the city of Austin during SXSW Interactive. Below is the first in a series of three posts I am going to share, which detail the pros and cons of exhibiting at the convention center during the interactive portion of SXSW.

Background

This was my 2nd time at SXSW, but it was my first time as an exhibitor and the first time that I threw a party or did a sponsorship. Although our party was a tremendous hit and our sponsorships worked out great for the most part, our booth was a disappointment. I should actually say that our booth was great, but the trade show was a bust for exhibitors. Yes we made some good contacts on Monday, but Tuesday through Thursday traffic dropped off dramatically and meaningful conversations were nowhere to be found.

This isn’t my first rodeo when it comes to trade shows. Fluent does close to 20 trade shows a year and I probably attend half to three quarters of them as an attendee, speaker or exhibitor, so I know how to gauge traffic, quality of conversation and overall value. At the end of the day, the SXSW Interactive Trade Show feels like a sham for the exhibitors inside the main convention center’s inner hall. The companies and brands that can secure booth space in the outer hall (the ring around the inner hall) which is open to everyone with or without a badge, do considerably better. This is because the outer hall is open from Thursday through the following Thursday, to align with the SXSW Interactive Festival.

Overview

An Interactive Festival by definition means that people should be able to interact and engage with a specific piece of content, a booth or an exhibit. The outer hall was filled with such exhibitors and they all did a great job providing badge holders and the general public with a highly interactive experience. The inner hall, although it did feature some interactive displays and exhibits, was largely about showcasing digital companies, agencies or brands. And because the opening of the inner hall Trade Show didn’t align with the Interactive Festival, it seemed more like an afterthought as opposed to an intricate part of the SXSW experience.

Just to recap for those who have never been, the SXSW Interactive Festival starts on Thursday night but the first full day is Friday. The Interactive Festival then runs Saturday, Sunday and most people either leave sometime Monday, or early Tuesday morning. For those reading closely, I understand you might be confused because I just noted that the Interactive Trade Show runs from Monday through Thursday. This means that you are just getting started as an exhibitor in the Trade Show, when everyone else there for the Festival is leaving. To validate my point, all you have to do is look to the top of SXSW.COM, the official site for the show, and you can clearly see the dates for Interactive. The 9th – 13th is Friday through Tuesday.

It’s perplexing I know. The Trade Show should start on Friday and end Monday or Tuesday afternoon, to align with the actual days of the Interactive Festival. To all those exhibiting, it feels like you’ve been taken by SXSW. The amount of money it costs to exhibit isn’t worth the booth traffic you receive on the best day, which is Monday.

Takeaways

The net net here is that unless you have a booth in the outer ring of the convention center, that’s highly interactive, you are paying to exhibit for three days after your core audience has left, assuming your audience is people who are attending the Interactive Festival. Why the Trade Show doesn’t align with the Festival has eluded me, but what I do know is that the $7,500 I paid for setup and to exhibit wasn’t worth it. Next year I’ll be more wisely spending that money on platinum badges for my team, then sending them out to proactively network during day. We will skip the hours spent loafing around a booth talking to UT students and faculty about how great the new Wi-Fi hotspots are on campus – it’s simply not worth it…

This week look for SXSW Diaries Part 2: Key Takeaways for Throwing a Party or Doing a Sponsorship

Next week look for SXSW Diaries Part 3: Key Takeaways for Guerilla Marketing

The Importance of Experience in Mobile Applications

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In the wake of Foursquare’s recent version update that includes badge leveling, I thought I’d take a look back at Foursquare’s early beginnings and how they beat out competitors in the space to become the number one location-based service for checkins.

The most important thing to consider when designing and building a mobile application is the experience; more important than design, more important than look and feel, more important even than platform. Before I explain, lets first look at the development of two very similar apps focusing on the gamification of LBS. We all know Foursquare and some of us probably even use it on a regular basis, but who has heard of and uses Gowalla? If we examine the Gowalla user base that number is far smaller, around 1.5 million users compared to Foursquare’s 10 million users. Why is there such a dramatic rift in the install base of two very similar apps? They both focus on gamifying check-ins, they both launched about the same time and they both reward users with badges for checking in and power use. With a feature set so similar you’d expect parity, but that just isn’t case.

GoWalla

I think it’s safe to say that at this point, Foursquare has emerged the victor with the biggest chunk of repeat LBS users.  And the reason…? Because it provides a better experience. During the first iteration of both apps, before any major updates, they were both incredibly similar save for two major differences. Gowalla prohibits users from checking in to locations they are not in the immediate proximity of. Foursquare takes a more liberal approach and lets users checkin regardless of where they are located. This precipitates the second difference, speed of checkin. Because Gowalla’s backend is forced to work overtime confirming the exact location of the user, then matching that with the surrounding location, this inevitably becomes a longer checkin process. Foursquare only uses LBS to detect nearby locations but it’s not requiring users to be within a certain proximity of the place they are checking-in to.  Foursquare checkins are a one step process and typically take half the time. Physical proximity and speed of checkin facilitate a better user experience and form the deciding factor in Foursquare’s victory.

GoWalla

Most people who have used both applications agree that GoWalla is better designed and has cooler looking badges. In an application that relies on gamifying the checkin and then rewarding users for it, you’d think design and badges would be everything – and although those are two extremely important elements, experience is going to win out every time.

Foursquare Profile

Does it really mean anything to be a Foursquare Mayor?

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I currently hold 6 mayorships on Foursquare. I wouldn’t consider myself a super user but I have a large friend network so this isn’t too bad considering. It’s fun to walk into a place that you frequent and then receive a unique offer simply because they want to give you a little something extra. In New Orleans, a place I called home for 5 years, they have a saying for this called lagniappe. A French Creole word used almost exclusively in Louisiana that means “a little something extra.” This may come in the form of something you receive at the time of purchase, like the extra donut in a bakers dozen, or even a compliment, something for good measure.

In Foursquare, lagniappe is typically extended at the time of purchase. At Starbucks this means $1 off a Frappuccino, while Pizza Hut rewards mayors with free breadsticks. This is different than rewards you earn for checking-in. In Manhattan many of the bars and restaurants on Third Avenue reward users with a free draft beer the first time they check-in, while mayors receive 15% off their tab. There is a clear distinction between a reward you receive for checking-in and a reward you receive for achieving mayor status. Greater rewards are extended to mayors as these are the people who return most frequently – the regulars.

Foursquare, in their 3.0 release a few months ago, created a “Specials” section in the main nav where users can search nearby destinations based on whether or not they offer rewards for check-ins or for mayors. This update came in response to critics who said brands had no way to clearly monetize the LBS and “Specials” is a feature loyalty programs can be built upon. Clearly this is something that Foursquare wants to emphasize and it’s not surprising that so many brands want to participate. It’s really a win-win situation for both user and brand if executed properly. The user receives a tangible reward for their loyalty (lagniappe) and the brand receives ongoing customer loyalty and social props that will probably come in the form of evangelism on the social web.

This all sounds good in theory, but unfortunately in reality, it’s not so simple. I was at BLT Fish in Manhattan just last Friday. I have held onto the mayor title for the last 6 weeks and I’ve been anxious to redeem my reward, which is pretty generous – a free lobster roll. I shared my excitement with Twitter and I even got a couple of responses from @BLTFish as you can see below.

I went Friday night at around 6:00 before any real dinner rush had formed. I beelined it to the bar for a few drinks and to show the bartender my mayor status as instructed by Foursquare.

After a few drinks I sat down to order and then showed the server my phone before he put the order in.  The server, who was clearly channeling Todd from Wedding Crashers and probably shouldn’t have been in the service industry to begin with says, “Ohhhh yeahhh I’m like so sorrrry, this is like only good at like the barrrr.”   His insincerity and cloying tone immediately prompted me to ask for the manager who then told me the same thing. Knowing this was wrong, I referred to the above tweet and offered the phone up, twitter message clearly displayed, for validation.  The manager said he would check with corporate before shuffling off.  Unfortunately he never returned.

I guess I was most disappointed with the fact that the manager never came back to apologize, or even to inform me the roll wouldn’t be on my tab. My server also disappeared and sent 3 other people to bring out my food and drink. Good or even decent customer service would dictate an apology or at least an explanation, especially considering the whole reason I hold the mayorship in the first place – I’m a regular. I go there, I check-in, I spend money.

My point is this, if you are going to run a Special on Foursquare then all the details need to be communicated from the top down. Starbucks uses a “Need to Know” sheet that is posted next to the cash register. This includes detailed information on Foursquare promotions and rewards, as well as the promotional code the server should be using when tabulating the bill in the system.

Many brands that run Specials fail to do this and it is an unfortunate, albeit common problem. The main objective, when offering a Foursquare Special, is to promote positive experiences and increased loyalty.  So when the mayor, or whoever else is checking-in  receives their reward, they will then evangelize their experience on the social web and via word of mouth.

Even though BLT Fish begrudgingly honored my mayorship, I am left with a bad taste in mouth – the fish was good but the service and overall experience were terrible. The question I posed to the Twitterati is this: “Is my one measly lobster roll really worth losing me as a customer and even more importantly, the negative sentiment that will be amplified throughout my social network?”

Sadder still is how some words are lost in translation across a thousand mile divide. The only lagniappe I received was a headache followed by a stomachache. That’s a little something extra I would have cared to avoid.