Dive Brief:

• Pinterest launched its first-ever Secret Santa, a personalized gift-giving tool that allows users to find custom gift ideas for friends and family, the company announced in blog post. Brand partners for the tool include Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, Coca-Cola, CVS and Universal Pictures.
• The tool uses the Pinterest API to create custom idea boards based on what friends and family are saying on the social media platform. To find gifts for people who aren’t on Pinterest, users can find a persona, such as travelers or pet lovers, similar to the person they are shopping for.
• Examples of how the brand partners are making gift suggestions include Amazon offering toy and game ideas and the Echo division providing tech suggestions; Universal Pictures promoting the release of “Despicable Me 3;” Coca-Cola providing custom messages for thoughtful gift givers; Bed Bath & Beyond offering ideas for the home, and CVS Pharmacy highlighting gifting supplies like wrap, tags, boxes and cards.

Dive Insight:

Among the social media platforms, Pinterest once was seen as the logical place to integrate e-commerce and marketing opportunities to drive sales conversions. But somewhere along the way, Pinterest failed to adequately take advantage of that perception, leaving the door open for Facebook to become the leader in social commerce. An Open Influence study from last month that found the social media giant led all other platforms for last-click social commerce with almost 48% of U.S. social media users reporting they made their most recent purchase from Facebook compared to 8.6% from Instagram, 4.5% from YouTube and a mere 2.1% from Pinterest.

The Pinterest Secret Santa tool is a positive step toward getting its users thinking about gift giving and making purchases while engaged with the platform. And the five brand partners are reaching a generous audience as the blog post stated Pinterest pinners are 35% more likely to buy gifts than non-pinners and will spend 45% more when they do buy gifts.

Pinterest has also been ramping up its visual search capabilities, most recently through a new “Lens Your Look” feature that allows users to take photos of their own clothes and get outfit recommendations styled around that item as well as introducing Pincodes, a similar tool to QR codes, which takes users to branded Pinterest boards after using smartphone cameras to scan the codes. Nordstrom and Home Depot have already put the Pincodes in some stores.