Its 48.7 million users – predominantly women with children – get this in spades. They spend hours pinning recipes and clever ways to entertain, filling their virtual closets and bookshelves, and building craft boards. The beautiful images they repin speak millions of words that they’d never expect or hope to find buried in their Facebook feed.

Pinterest inspires them; Facebook connects them.

They are as unique and different as each of their children, which is why mom doesn’t need to be schooled on the subject.

Still many brands continue to grapple with the differing value propositions, chasing the audience without understanding the medium. It’s like Facebook all over again. Build a page, push product and services via posts and act surprised when your fan base doesn’t blow up overnight. It took years for brands to learn how to use social media effectively. Now that it appears to be working, they’re applying it across all platforms – from Facebook to Pinterest and every social channel in between. That’s like using your car manual to fly a Cessna.

If the brand doesn’t fit, don’t build a board

Pinterest is not for all brands. The general litmus test follows: (1) Does your product or service appeal to women? (2) Does your brand fit into one or more of the following categories – cooking, fashion, healthcare, beauty, decorating, entertaining, crafting or travel? (If you’re thinking too deeply, you’re trying too hard.) (3) Can your brand be adequately captured in images? (4) Do you have resources necessary to build a business case, operational plan and manage said plan?

The CMO of a medium-sized credit union recently asked if the financial institution should start a board. While we immediately cleared the first question, we racked our brains far too long attempting to answer the second. True, credit unions can help provide the financing to realize our wish lists. They can help us envision a certain lifestyle or dream vacation. But that’s aspirational, not inspirational.

If it takes too many steps to connect the source of inspiration to the brand, your marketing dollars can probably be better spent elsewhere. Facebook, perhaps.

Here a pin, there a pin

Similar to Facebook, the most visited place on Pinterest is the home page. But unlike Facebook, pins are not sorted in or out by EdgeRank. This means that anything you pin could be seen in the feed when people log in.  What’s more, over 80 percent of pins are re-pins (Pinterest Insider, April 2013). So most people are re-pinning directly from the newsfeed rather than searching out original pins. This means you need to be pinning far more often per day than you’re posting on Facebook.

A picture is worth 1,000 impressions

Pinterest is image-driven. You’re competing against professional photography and graphic illustrations meant to spark an emotional or cerebral connection. If you’re building a board, you need engaging, thoughtful and relevant images that will demand attention and beg to be repinned. Brogan has used a combination of beautiful photography and irreverent, clever graphic design to pepper the HoneyBaked Ham Company’s boards with content that followers enjoy sharing.

All pins lead to your website

Your Pinterest plan should begin and end with your website. This is where all visitors will go to learn more about your brand. Because more than 80 percent of pins are repins, you should expect a lot of new visitors to your site. Consider having an interstitial with a brief introduction and special offer for new visitors, whereby you may feed your database while delighting a new potential customer.

Pinterest continues to gain great momentum, building a passionate and influential consumer base. When properly planned and managed, it can help propel brand awareness and profitability. It needs to be treated as the unique communications channel that is it, rather than Facebook’s twin sister.

What do you think? Has your brand delved into Pinterest with any success?

For more, download our free white paper on “How to Sell Pinterest to Your Hospital C-Suite.”

A great marketing to women campaign that is #awesome, #inspiring, and #brilliant is the #mygirls campaign for Adidas. This global campaign aimed at girls 14-23, with a concentration on 17 year olds, uses social media as the anchor to engage and rally girls all over the world with their passion for sports. Nike was always the vanguard for marketing to women since the 1980’s but, Adidas is about to give Nike a run for its money. Using the hashtag #mygirls, this campaign engages its audience on Twitter and Instagram. The microsite is a hub for girls to follow other girls around the world like Jordanian boxers or Brazilian divers. A visual feast of connectivity, it shares its fans pictures and tweets. It inspires, gives advice and contest opportunities, and connects its audience to trend-setting gear and wear.  A guerilla aspect of the campaign is putting pop up gyms in various cities to invite girls to explore and try their hand at different sports like fencing and cricket. This campaign is a homerun for all girls with a passion for sports, whether they sport Adidas or not. And the goodwill Adidas will get from going beyond the sell to engagement should get them more fans and sales all over the world. My new current favorite marketing to women campaign is #mygirls.  Do you think this creative connects to girls?

Want to see more, check out my first post in my series 20 examples of marketing to women that connects.

When the Kindle first debuted, it did so with a memorable campaign that featured a woman and used stop motion to tell a story. The idea was to breakthrough in a creative way, as the product at the time was creative and breakthrough. It was inspired by previous YouTube stop motion viral videos online and inspired more YouTube stop motion videos afterwards. Without going into too much detail on the product benefits, the campaign created a name for the brand with this memorable concept. But now in efforts to keep up with Apple, the new Kindle Fire advertising is being more competitive and more demonstrative—taking a cue from the Apple brand playbook. Now, while the voiceover and copy are emotional in the Kindle Fire spot it is more about how great the product is and how many apps it has. I wish, Kindle would have stayed with a fresh approach and just added some more product benefits without going to the tired “anthem” format. Apple is continuing to do simple television demonstrations with their products in a clever way that seem to resonate with men, women of all ages. And with ads like the one featuring Zoe Deschanel talking to her new bestie, Siri, apple continues to spurn spin offs in the viral world of YouTube like this duet with Siri. So which do you think is the most effective way to engage women with a tech product?  A great concept, great demonstration or a great anthem?

Want to see more, check out my first post in my series 20 examples of marketing to women that connects.

In October, our creative director Laurie Hix mourned the passing of Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign. For seven years, Dove had celebrated women with body fat, freckles, wrinkles, gray hairs, and other “flaws.” In the first two months of the campaign, Dove’s U.S sales increased by 600 percent, illustrating the immense power of brands that know how to market to women.

After that, the company launched a self-esteem saver and continued to redefine beauty. It made many women, including me, very, very happy.

When Dove shifted gears and started producing spots with sassy, skinny women soaping up in the shower, Laurie wrote, “It seemed like all the progress they made just evaporated.”

Well, it seems Dove got the message. If the company was seeking redemption with its new video, it has succeeded in spades. The film instantly went viral, with almost 3.5 million views as I write this. A 6.5-minute version has gotten almost half a million views. And while I’m at it, Dove’s Facebook page has more than 13.7 million likes, which blows competition like Olay’s 1.6 million likes away.

The video portrays women who’ve been partnered with a stranger for reasons unknown to them. After spending some time together, each subject goes into a sunny loft and describes herself to a forensic artist. The artist is separated from the subjects by a screen and draws their images based on the subjects’ descriptions only. Next, the partner describes this same woman to the artist. Then the subjects come and view their two sketches side-by-side. Invariably, the self-described portrait looks heavy, unattractive, and downright melancholy compared with the prettier pictures made with input from the strangers.

As the women view their sad self-images, their faces fall. One of them even cries. I must admit, when I watched it, I teared up, too.

The message at the film’s end, accompanied by quiet piano music, is, You are more beautiful than you think.

I’m excited by Dove’s return to its Real Beauty roots for a couple reasons:

1. Money Talks
   Such a quick reversal might indicate that Dove’s sales fell when they started using conventionally beautiful models instead of women who were both beautiful and (take your pick) short, flat-chested, overweight, or older.  This shows that a cultural shift has indeed happened. In addition, a powerful branding phenomenon has happened. Dove spent years carefully and even lovingly building a brand around this idea of real beauty. They sent positive messages in both their advertising and their products like the lotion they named Pro-Age instead of Anti-Wrinkle.

   That’s why women felt so connected to the Dove brand—and why they may have stopped buying when the Real Beauty ended.

2. The Expansion of Advertising
   These videos (you can choose between a 1.5 minute version, a 3-minute one, and a 6.5-minute one) are not commercials. They are films, with a narrative arc, beautiful art direction, and a real emotional impact. (Have any of your Facebook friends shared the video with the comment, “This made me cry?” Several of mine have.)

   Dove isn’t pushing product here. They don’t even mention a product, or the Dove name, other than a brief flash of the logo at the end. Yet the impact on the brand is massive.

This shows me just how powerful it can be to think both outside the box and in long-range terms when you’re molding a brand. If we’re brave, genuine, and give our target audience—women—what they really want, we can achieve big, big things.

When Dove does a more conventional soap sell, as Laurie pointed out, it looks just like its competitors. It’s when the product takes a step back—and lets the beauty of real women shine—that the brand really stands out.

I hope the instant success of this video encourages Dove to stick to its guns—to connect to women in a unique, respectful, and beautifully real way. In short, to make an emotional connection.