Today, I had some fun creating a diverse series of Christmas trees for a thematic board on Pinterest. It got me into the holiday spirit.
I have many favorites among the variations. It got me thinking about how a tree is a tree, yet they come in all kinds of shapes and can be dressed up based on themes to show different stories.
We are such visual creatures, and we demonstrate our ability both in appreciating images and in curating collections.
For mine, I chose to edit the stock descriptions that came with the visuals with a one or two word description to tell a story of what I see.
While it is easier to do with products, I envision a time when we will be able to help people articulate how they feel about our service by selecting images.
According to a research paper by Vision Critical and reported by Alexandra Samuel on HBR blogs#, Pinterest has a an impact on purchasing by helping combat showrooming, and driving personal picks and deals.
And Pinterest has evolved the concept. As the Washington Post# reports:
The Pinterest deal that has people talking on Twitter is a new online shopping experience called the Target Awesome Shop. This is basically a modified Pinterest page that takes two inputs — items that have the highest number of recent pins on Pinterest and the items that have the top reviews on Target.com — and mashes them together into a set of “awesome” Target gift recommendations. When you click on a pin for more information, you’re redirected to the main Target.com page, where you can add the item to your shopping cart.
Retailers offering more mundane types of products will need to get creative on the kind of stories they want to show… and tell. Make sure your images are sized and posted to the site properly for good pinning (see for example how chocolatiers with flash sites and poor images missed out on Valentine's Day pinning).
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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effects on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.