Brief:
- Pinterest today is introducing Pinterest Trends, an online tool that shows the top searches among its digital pinboards from the prior 12 months. The trend tracker also shows when top search terms peak on its platform, helping to determine how content performs, per an announcement shared with our sister publication Mobile Marketer.
- As part of the announcement, the company published its annual Pinterest 100 report to showcase the latest trends in food, home, style, beauty, health, travel and family content among its 320 million users worldwide. Marketers can use the insights to anticipate what consumers want to try, buy and do next year, per Pinterest.
- Pinterest again organized its annual trends report into 10 major categories, but this time focused on themes that are relevant among a cross-section of products and services. Those themes include Beyond Binary for changing gender norms, Conscious Consumption for sustainability, Finding Balance for wellness and emotional health, Home Hub for interior design and Internationally Inspired for multicultural ideas. The list also includes Pampered Pets for pet care spending, Responsible Travel for eco-tourism and other ideas like rewilding for nature lovers, Space Everything for astrology and space travel and '90s Rerun for nostalgia. Dog halos, Granny pods, agritourism and rockhounding are among the latest trends that will shape 2020, per Pinterest.
Insight:
Pinterest's introduction of Pinterest Trends and its 2020 outlook aim to help consumers and marketers see the freshest trends, while reinforcing the platform's brand messaging. Pinterest has touted the aspirational nature of its platform among consumers who use its platform to create digital pinboards of stuff they like. Those pinboards can include ideas for travel, home decorating, fashion and significant events like holidays and weddings. Pinterest Trends gathers the most popular ideas in one place, helping to improve discovery of its content and to boost engagement among its users.
As Pinterest notes, the trends are insightful for marketers who want to ensure their products and services are positioned with consumer demand. Its 2020 report highlights themes that are relevant for a wide variety of industries. For example, sustainability not only informs what products people buy, but also what decisions they make in choosing travel destinations.
These themes are especially relevant in appealing to Gen Z consumers who are entering adulthood and making their own purchase decisions. Pinterest's trends report supports other research on Gen Z brand preferences. More than half (58%) of the demographic group chooses a brand's purpose, values and mission as its most important trait, per a PSFK survey released earlier this year.
The Pinterest Trends tool arrives as the social media company builds out its platform with a wider selection of software tools for marketers, including e-commerce support to convert Pinners, as its users are known, into shoppers. Last month, Pinterest debuted an online marketplace, @PinterestShop, to showcases a selection of smaller merchants that sell products through its platform. Pinterest also expanded its "Shop the Look" pins for the fashion and beauty industries to small businesses, and this year created an ad format based on the pins for retailers that want to feature multiple products in a collection.
