Pinterest to ramp up advertising and ditch ‘Like’ button to show it’s different from Facebook and Instagram
Pinterest is set to launch its first major ad campaign in the US this summer as it looks to show that it’s not a social network.
Pinterest shedding its association with Facebook and Instagram
Chief executive Ben Silbermann this week said that the company’s biggest challenge is getting people to understand that Pinterest isn't a social network, saying it wants to be seen as a visual search engine.
"The hope is that you'll get ideas for your real life, and you'll close the app, get off your phone and try those ideas,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg.
It is now mulling a significant spend on out-of-home, digital and print for a campaign in American in an effort to show how different it is from other photo-heavy apps like Instagram and Facebook.
But this wouldn’t be Pinterest’s first advertising push. Last year it invested in an above-the-line campaign in the UK in a quest for more users, showing people at the very moment they might turn to the site for inspiration.
In seeming preparation to permanently shed its associations with Facebook and Instagram, it this week ditched the ‘Like’ button on its site.
Confirming its decision to get rid of the Like button to Recode, it claimed Pinterest users found it confusing to distinguish between ‘Like’ and ‘Save’ buttons.
“While other companies want you to live in a virtual world, Pinterest encourages people to live in the real world. We like to say, be yourself and not your selfie,” a spokesperson said.
“There are many services out there with the mission of helping you connect and share with friends; we’re the one app exclusively in the visual discovery business.”