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Table of Contents
History ……………………………………………………………………………… 2
Reach & Scope………………………………………………………………………2-3
Case Study 1…………………………………………………………………………4
Case Study 2…………………………………………………………………………5
Other Industry Examples…………………………………………………………….6
Interview…………………………………………………………………………….6
Class Content……………………………………………………………………….(Hinseth,
2012)6-7
Competitive advantage……………………………………………………………..7
Works Cited………………………………………………………………………..8
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Section One - History of Pinterest
Pinterest is very comparable to earlier social networking image bookmarking systems
based on the same standard. However in the beginning Pinterest’s future was no more
established than the early iPhone apps. Development of the Pinterest website began in
December 2009. The founder is Ben Sibermann. He graduated from Yale with a major in
Political Science. He then got a job with Google designing products like display ads. After
resigning from Google he took up iPhone apps, where he learned a lot of useful techniques that
went into designing Pinterest. Ben sent only 200 Pinterest emails out to his friends and only 100
of them opened them email. It then launched as a closed beta in March 2010 and continued to
operate in invitation-only. Only nine months after the launch Pinterest had 10,000 users. Now
Pinterest has over 20 million users.
It allows users to save images and classify them on different boards of their choice. If
someone has similar tastes the user can follow their posts. Pinterest is becoming a trend for
many companies because it is a great way to get their name out there and it is low in cost. Social
media like Pinterest is an excellent marketing tool. In December 2011 the site had progressed to
one of the top 10 largest social network services. This data was according to Hitwise data, with
11 million total visits per week.
Pinterest became open to everyone without request or required invitation on August 10th
of 2012. They also came out with a Pinterest app for iPads and android. Another new feature
Pinterest has come out with is the fact that users can report offensive or negative activity or
block users if they wish to not see their content. Pinterest has many categories to choose from
some of popular ones are travel and (hospitality), cars, film, humor, home design, sports, fashion
and art.
The travel section is where most of the hospitality images and posts come from. This is
one of the most top visited categories. It contains images of destination areas, hotels, good ideas
and tips for vacationing. If people like what the pins they see they can click on the image and it
will take them to the destination’s website. Just like that you have their attention with one
image. You can find some of the most exotic hotels and destination spots located on Pinterest,
places you might never find from just Google searching places.
Reach And Scope
Pinterest is not just people pinning different crafts, project or recipes, businesses are
using it effectively by pinning links to their websites as a way to showcase items, hotels, special
of their vacation spot offers and special discounts, and just an overall way to advertise their
company without breaking companies advertising budget. Social Media is the new up and
coming way to advertise for various career fields but is extremely crucial and helpful when it
comes to getting their name out there. When people are looking to travel seeing images is
something that they really look at. If the pictures look really nice and inviting customers are
more likely to choose your hotel verse a hotel with no images because you don’t know what you
could be getting. Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) puts Pinterest to good use very
easily. The purpose of DMOs is to relay the numerous aspects of the city they represent, to
tempt people to come visit. Destinations can exclusively deliver their stores by sharing
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pinboards for many components of their cities including Hotels, shopping, dining, and
attractions.
A brand that has taken up a solid Pinterest space is Visit Savannah. This is a marketing
page responsible for getting people to the Savannah area for leisure, meetings, tourism and
conventions. Visit Savannah began using Pinterest as a marketing tool in November just as an
experiment and just within a few months they have attracted nearly 12,000 followers. The DMO
has a variety of different boards views can pin to including; dining, hotels, shopping, gorgeous
architecture along with theme boards. Some theme boards are “haunted Savannah”,
“southernisms”, and “let your hair down” featuring nightlife, sports, and libations. By
comprising a range of visual content, Savannah is allowing people to exactly visualize different
elements of the city and it is offered for a great travel experience.
Pinterest for hotels and resorts are a lot like destination, hotels can showcase what they
offer to customers through Pinterest. This can be done by creating boards for features like
amenities, spa services, in-house dining opportunities, meeting space and weddings. A hotel that
uses Pinterest effectively is the Four Seasons hotel in Austin Texas. They have created
Pinboards for the city itself but also weddings, day trips, travel tips, and adventure activities.
This allows a travel to theoretically plan their entire trip within this Pinboard as the starting point
with all the information that is viewable in one place.
The Ritz-Carlton in Chicago has made a Pinterest page specifically geared toward only
the wedding market. The Ritz –Carlton’s boards include displaying the hotels ambiance,
wedding accessories, food-drink options, honeymoon suites, flowers, linens and cakes. Being
that Pinterest is more geared towards females, single and married alike have boards dedicated to
strictly dedicated to weddings. This being it is very wise for venues to position their
establishment as a wedding hub because women will most likely be prone and drawn to sharing
the wedding images.
Being that Restaurants are another big part of the Hospitality industry several of them
have been coming to Pinterest to market their food, events, cocktails, and meeting rooms very
similar in the way they would create Facebook albums. An example of this is Whole Foods
which is a grocery store but have set an example for many brands in the restaurant business.
Whole Foods created boards for various genres of foo, food art, kitchens, gardens, recipes and
even different foods for every holiday. Photography of food is an extremely popular trend, and
people in the social media world love sharing photos of food they enjoy. The Whole Foods
industry did an excellent job of thinking outside of the box. Some business are worried about
advertising on another social media cite because they might think they don’t have enough to
share on Pinterest but there are tons of ways to widen the scope of what is suitable for you to
share.
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Section Two – Real World Examples
Case Study One – Milestone Insights
Milestone Insights did a study to find out if pinterest is a worthy marketing tool. What
Milestone Insights did was took four hotels and made them each a pinterest account. The four
hotels were Grand Velas Riviera Maya, Inn on Bourbon, Bardessono, and Ramada Pacific. All
these hotels are luxurious and high end hotels. The social media and internet marketing strategies
company created different accounts for each of the four hotels. Under the hotels account they
created boards such as food in the area, beaches, and weddings. They also pinned pictures that
were on the hotels website and other media about the hotel and used keywords that would attract
pinterest user’s attention. Milestone would interact with the users by acting interested in their
boards and pins. One of the key findings from this case study was that if you are trying to bring
awareness to your brand or hotel that pinterest is where you can do it successfully. Pinterest gets
approximately 11.7 million visitors each month looking for something different.(Mitchell, 2012)
Pinterest users tend to spend on average 89 minutes(Mitchell, 2012). Another finding was that if
you have any issues with providing visual substance that pinterest can really help a hotel fix that.
Results showed that hotels with the most breath taking photos had more traffic.
(Mitchell, 2012)
Some of the issues that this case study showed was with using pinterest as a marketing
tool you are getting your brand out but pinterest did not show worthy results of increasing a
hotels revenue. The example the case study gave was that in five weeks the Inn on Bourbon had
176 repins yet only had one person go to the booking engine.(Mitchell, 2012)Some other issues
with using pinterest as a marketing tool is that clicking on a picture on pinterest may not bring
you directly to the hotel site making it difficult for users to find your hotels page.
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(Mitchell, 2012)
This case study showed that if your trying to spread the word about your hotel and create
brand awareness pinterest can be an extremely successful tool.
Case Study two-- Meetings & Hospitality Industry on Pinterest
Chicago’s Meeting Professionals International did a study where they wanted to find out
how many people in the hospitality industry were using pinterest as a marketing tool. The author
asked five questions to over one hundred people both who were planners and suppliers. The
questions were 1. Are they familiar with the site? 2. Do they use the site? 3. Why or why not? 4.
Do they use it to assist in meeting planning or marketing? 5. If so how? (MPI, 2012) What the
author found was although they only received a few responses she found out that pinterest was a
source most people didn’t know about or what it does. The author goes on to explain why
pinterest is such a fantastic tool for people working in the hospitality industry. Event planners
can create boards on pinterest and invite the people attending to vote on meeting locations, menu
options, offsite dinner options, recreational activities by liking their favorite option.(Mitchell,
2012) The author brings to attention that if you are in the catering business pinterest is an
excellent tool to market your business. Catering managers can go on Pinterest for ideas for
decorating and ideas to make the event go smooth. For a hotel sales person who is going on a
sales call they can use pinterest to create boards which aim at their clients specific interests.
(Mitchell, 2012) If a hotel wants to promote their meeting space they set up different layouts and
create a board on pinterest to show their possible customers what they can expect when dealing
with that hotel. Another great marketing point this case study brought up was that the hotel can
have their employees create boards and uploads pictures of their favorite restaurants, attractions,
theaters, and other things they can do in the area for their guests to view while staying at your
hotel. Just as in the first case study this one also brings up the point that pinterest recently
announced that businesses and brands can now create accounts. This means that business can
upload their pictures, promote their brand, and engage with their customers to increase the
amount of visitors to their own websites.
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This case study once again showed that pinterest is becoming an important aspect in
marketing. This site is allowing business in the hospitality industry to spread word about their
brand, hotel, restaurant, etc.
Other Industry Examples
Fitness Industry
Another popular industry that uses pinterest as a marketing tool is the fitness industry.
Personal trainers can post fitness routines and motivational picture to help clients. They can also
put up success stories of other clients to show future clients that the trainers are successful.
Personal trainers have two goals, the first is to find new clients constantly and also keep their
existing clients which pinterest can do both.
Fashion Industry
Also popular on pinterest is the fashion industry. Since most of the users of pinterest are
women the fashion industry is very popular on pinterest. Ladies re-pin a picture of outfits they
like and if they click on the picture they can be taken to the site where they can purchase the
outfits. Glit has started a new marketing strategy called “Pin It to Unlock it.” Which means a
picture of an outfit needs to be pinned fifty times in order for someone to be able to purchase it.
(Phelan, 2012)
Section Three – Interview & Future Impacts
The Interview
After conducting an interview with Diane Brown who is a business consultant at
HoneyBaked Ham Company we learned that for some company’s pinterest might be to new to
use as a marketing tool. Our first question was if Honey Baked uses pinterest to market their
company or to make people more aware of their brand. She told me that they are currently not
using pinterest because it is just too new. Our next question was if they there is any plans in the
future to use pinterest and her answer was yes. Diane said that they just hired a new digital media
coordinator who is currently looking into trying to use pinterest but for now it is just to broad for
them to use it successfully. For now she told me that they are using other social media like
facebook and twitter but she thinks that in the near future Honeybaked Ham will be popping up
on pinterest.
Through this interview we learned that for some business pinterest is just to new and
broad to be able to successfully use to market their brand. That companies are waiting for the site
to develop more as a business marketing tool and that when it becomes more popular that they
will then try it out.
Class Content
The Pinterest trend defiantly agrees with the course content. On page 308 in chapter 9 it
talks about the importance of the atmosphere and how it relates directly to marketing.
Atmosphere is a critical element in services. It can be the customers’ reason for choosing to do
business with an establishment. This is where Pinterest can be very beneficial because you can
8. 7
pin pictures of your establishment’s atmosphere. If you have a great wedding space this would
be a great picture to post, or one of the best rooms in your hotel. This can really draw people to
your business verse others. The main visual dimensions of atmosphere are color, brightness, size
and shape. The main aural dimensions of atmosphere are volume and pitch. The main olfactory
dimensions of atmosphere are scent and freshness. Lastly the main tactile dimensions of
atmosphere are softness, smoothness, and temperature. These are example illustrates how
sensory terms are used to describe particular surroundings. These would be good descriptions
for the images one would post to Pinterest to describe the atmosphere of the business.
Also in chapter 9 it talks about customer interaction with other customers. An area that is
drawing the interest of hospitality researchers is the interaction of customers with each other.
This is important to a business because if the customer had a good experience with your
company they will spread the word to other customers and friends. This is free advertising by
word of mouth.
Branding is another important thing that identifies with our trend Pinterest. Some
conditions that contribute to the branding are: The first is product is easy to identify by brand
trademark. Second the product is perceived as the best value for the price. Number 3 is quality
and standards are easy to maintain. Hotel and restaurant chains have excellent examples of
easily identifiable features. It is important create brand awareness, so when people see the
trademark they instantly recognize it. I think Pinterest has a great trademark and is easily
noticed. This is helpful because when business post images on Pinterest because people
recognize the trademark and keeps becoming more and more popular and people tend to respect
it more when it is well knows.
Marketing Testing is key when it comes to social networking. Marketing testing gives
management the information it needs to make good and final decisions about whether to launch a
new idea about the site. If Pinterest were to launch a new marketing idea and it was not
successful like it was thought to be it would cost them a lot of money that would just go to waste.
Pinterest marketing a lot on other social media site which has been successful for them and cost
effective as well. It is important to know where to launch a new advertisement. Things must be
decided like a single location, a region, several regions, the national marketing, or the
international market. They must also decide to whom they should market to. They have to
narrow down the target market. Pinterest’s target market is most females in their 20’s to mid-
40’s. This is helpful because they know who they are targeting so they can come up with an
advertisement that is geared towards the female. That way they don’t have to worry about
marketing testing towards males in their 50’
Even when competing offers may look similar customers will pick up on even the
smallest difference in brands if they have seen multiple pictures of each brand. Hospitality
companies’ goals are to establish photos that make them stand out. Company or destination
pictures should show customers what they have to offer, what makes their brand better. Pinterest
helps companies post great pictures and then be able to see which pictures are most popular by
seeing how many times it has been pinned.
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How pinterest will maintain a competitive advantage
Competitors are a big deal for Pinterest because there are several social media sites with
advertising. Companies can watch competitor’s ads and other communication to obtain clues
and find out what each company is about. Pinterest should keep an eye out for Facebook, twitter.
They can pick up great ideas from different companies posts of different sites. Pinterest does a
good job of keeping up with competitors and different trends. Pinterest is not just here for a
while it is a trend that is here to stay.
Another reason why pinterest is a better marketing option is that pinterest users spent on
average 60% more time on pinterest then facebook. Also pinterest was able to make 22% more
sales than facebook was. Also facebook users saw about 1.6 pages where pinterest users saw
about 2.9 pages each visit. People are seeing more on pinterest, which is why pinterest has a
better competitive advantage than other social media when it comes to brand awareness. (Smith,
2013)
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Works Cited
Hinseth, H. (2012, January 17). History. Retrieved April 23, 2013, from History of Pinterest:
http://thehistoryofpinterest.blogspot.com/
Kotler. (2006). Marketing For hospitality and Tourism. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
Martell, J. (2012, September 20). Famous Bloggers. Retrieved April 20, 2013, from The History of
Pinterest- How one man turned his passion into social networking site:
http://www.famousbloggers.net/history-pinterest.html
Miller, D. (2012, February 16). How the Hospitality Industry Can Use Pinterest. Retrieved April 16, 2013,
from Winmill Networking: http://windmillnetworking.com/2012/02/16/hospitality-industry-
pinterest/
Mitchell, C. (2012, March 25). Case Study: Is Pinterest Right for Hotels? Retrieved March 23, 2013, from
Milestone Insights: http://blog.milestoneinternet.com/web-2/case-study-pinterest-for-hotels/
MPI, C. (2012, November 19). Meetings & Hospitality Industry on Pinterest. Retrieved April 24, 2013,
from Meeting Professionals International : http://chicagompi.org/2012/11/meetings-hospitality-
industry-on-pinterest/
Phelan, H. (2012, April 4). More Brands are tapping into Pinterest's Power - But will it actually drive
sales? Retrieved April 28, 2013, from Fashionista: http://fashionista.com/2012/04/more-brands-
are-tapping-into-pinterests-power-but-will-it-actually-drive-sales/
Smith, J. (2013, April 17). Socail Networking For Markerters: How pinterest crushed Facebook. Retrieved
April 28, 2013, from Rw10 Enterprise: http://readwrite.com/2013/04/17/social-networking-for-
marketers-pinterest-crushes-facebook-infographic
Interview Bio
Diane Brown graduated University of Wisconsin - Stout with a bachelor’s Degree in Hotel Restaurant and
Tourism management in 1992. She has had 18 years of experience in the food service industry. Some of
her past careers include: A franchise business consultant for taco johns, A training and education
consultant for taco johns, A store manager at caribou coffee, A senior training instructor at Dairy Queen,
and now she is currently working for HonekyBaked Ham as a Franchise Consultant.
