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A very Pinteresting breakfast

The Marketing Association hosted yet another sell-out Brainy Breakfast event last week, with over 300 marketers filling the Crowne Plaza’s conference room ready to listen to international social media expert, Brian Giesen and Jennifer Duval-Smith, executive director at Social@Ogilvy in New Zealand, speak about Pinterest—and how to use it to leverage social media campaigns. 

As an award-winning, founding member and director of Social@Ogilvy,
Giesen, an American expat based in Australia, carries with him a vast amount of knowledge in the social media space.
However, on this occasion, his focus was on the latest social media phenomenon,
Pinterest.

According to Giesen, Pinterest is currently the fastest growing
social network, even overtaking Facebook numbers. Over 150,000 New Zealanders
are currently signed up, with 620,000 in Australia and over 34 million
globally. 

Pinterest is essentially a virtual ‘Pin Board’. We see things we
like on websites or take photos of things ourselves, then share this content
online. In other words, we ‘pin’ what we like, create ‘pin boards’ of what
we love, and share it with other ‘pinners’. It’s highly integrated into Facebook and Twitter and this is
what makes the platform so addictive and so sharable.

Three things to know
about Pinterest

1.    Almost 80 percent of users are female.

2.    It is also a slightly older demographic, with an average age range
of 25-34 year. This counts for about 30 percent of the audience.

3.    It is highly addictive. The average time spent on Pinterest is
about 16 minutes, which is slightly higher than Facebook users. 

While most of us know what Pinterest is, very few really know how
it can be applied successfully to leverage a social campaign. So Giesen provided a case study of how it can work with a Kleenex
campaign carried out by Social@Ogilvy for Kimberly-Clark Australia called
‘Pin to Make a Difference’.

The focus of the campaign was to drive positive word-of-mouth online about
Kleenex Cottonelle, drive a sustainability message in support of Kleenex Cottonelle’s
Love Your Forests’ TV advert, and dial up the brand values of ‘environmentally
friendly’ and ‘cares about people.

During the planning phase, the Social@Ogilvy team conducted some research
into the target audience: mums. From there, it looked into what kinds of
conversations were taking place online with regards to household good. It was
here they established that not only do everyday household goods spark a
lot of chatter online, but ‘helping’ others is the number one reason
Australians were chatting online about these household goods.

Through this research, the team found a lack of practical know-how
to make the home more sustainable and thus, saw it as a perfect chance for Kleenex
to step up in this space.

This then led to the big idea: What if Kleenex Cottonelle could get
thousands of Australian mums pinning to make a difference?

To kick-start this campaign, the Social@Ogilvy team began by
getting the brand onto the Pinterest platform, pinning images, building pin
boards. It then recruited prominent Aussie influencers like Channel 7’s Sunrise
presenter Mel Doyle and Pro-blogger Darren Rowse to act as event draw-cards and
seed the message through their networks.

30 bloggers and media attended Australia’s first ‘Pin to Make a
Difference’ half-day event. Guest speakers from WWF, FSC and Kimberly-Clark
inspired the conversations, kick-starting 520 online conversations and reaching over
two million people.

It held a 15-minute “fastest pinning” competition and the event
trended #1 on Twitter in Australia with the hashtag #PIN4GOOD, even beating The Voice! 

The Social@Ogilvy team invited mum bloggers to host micro contests
on their networks giving the winners a Kleenex Cottonelle Goody pack. And to date, 108 micro contest conversations have taken place, reaching +20,000
people in mum blogger communities. 100 percent of this coverage was positive and all included a sustainability message and brand links, reaching a total of 1.5
million consumers. 

In addition to this, ‘Pin to Make a Difference’ continues to gain
industry recognition. The campaign is currently rated in the ‘top 10 brands
using Pinterest’ by Marketing Magazine, and made it into the ‘eight Australian
Brands to Watch on Pinterest’ list by the Village Agency.

In conjunction with Pinterest, Twitter was a key driver to
involving people in this event and driving reach.

  • Georgia Ness is an account manager at Bullet PR

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