Asserting that content has “passed the crown” from traditional media to online, Wall Street equity researcher Pivotal Research Group initiated coverage of three ad-supported jewels -- Google, Facebook and Yahoo -- with strong ratings. “The adage ‘content is a king’ was always somewhat subjective,’” writes Pivotal’s Brian Wieser, a long-time Madison Avenue forecaster who authored the report, adding: “But on the Web, the argument content is king is difficult if not impossible to make in the long-run, in our opinion: what is important are infrastructure, platforms and tools controlled by Google, Facebook and others.” Wieser assigned “buy” ratings to Google (his top Internet stock pick), and Yahoo, and hasn’t put an explicit rating on a still-pre-IPO Facebook yet, but estimated its “target value” as $81 billion. What those Big 3 Internet players have in common, Wieser said, is that they are not simply content–dependent, but are superior platforms for users to consume content, and have the best technologies for monetizing that with data about the users. “Advertisers are increasingly indifferent to the context in which messages appear, at least when compared with other media,” he explained, adding: “Vast and growing arrays of data ensure that audiences (or at least the data-driven attributes which imply the characteristics of any given advertising impression) become the most important basis for delivering commercial messages in the long run. Efficient re-aggregation of fragmented audiences also becomes increasingly critical.” Wieser said Google was Pivotal’s top pick among Internet stocks, because while “paid search remains a juggernaut,” he believes it is actually Google’s “strategic dominance in ad-tech” that makes it most valuable to investors. “Future growth of Internet-related advertising will ride on infrastructure, and Google owns much of it,” he asserted.
To mark its 75th anniversary and connect face-to-face with consumers across the country, Krispy Kreme has launched a “Glaze the Nation” Tour. Over the next year, brand ambassadors will make stops from coast to coast in a restored, branded, 1960-vintage Flxible Starliner bus -- a vehicle deemed to have “just the right balance of nostalgia, retro and cool,” according to SVP/CMO Dwayne Chambers. "Because our purpose is to 'touch and enhance lives through the joy that is Krispy Kreme' we felt it was important to get out of our shops and take the party on the road," Chambers says. The bus tour is also meant to pay tribute to founder Vernon Rudolph’s use of a small fleet of delivery trucks to build his nascent business in the early 1940’s, and continues to leverage the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based company’s associations with the NASCAR culture. The Krispy Kreme Cruiser is being operated for the brand by Richard Childress Racing, and the tour kicked off in Daytona, Fla. on Feb. 23 with an event featuring appearances by former NASCAR drivers Kyle, Richard and Austin Petty. The tour will make at least 500 scheduled stops at local fairs and festivals, major events and Krispy Kreme stops in 37 states, as well as “spontaneous” stops. In addition to samples of its Original Glazed doughnuts and other sweets, representatives will engage fans with games, prizes and a variety of giveaways. The cruiser is outfitted with a geo-navigator so that fans can track its location in real-time. Through a GlazeTheNation.com area on the brand’s site, and promotions and links from the brand’s Facebook and Twitter presences, they can also view photos and videos, read the tour guides’ blog (and get updates through Wordpress), interact with the guides and follow the tour’s Twitter conversation. Fans are also being encouraged to tag themselves with Cruiser on Foursquare, pin the brand on Pinterest, and follow it on Instagram. Those who register as “friends of Krispy Kreme” can also receive emailed tour updates. Chambers, a veteran of Fuddrucker’s, Noodles & Co., Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and Sonic Drive-In who became Krispy Kreme’s CMO in September 2010, early on declared his intention to use television and traditional media more selectively and pump up social media -– in part because of its international reach. (In addition to some 230 U.S. stores and 10,000 outlets/drive-throughs in U.S. grocery, convenience and mass-merchant retailers, Krispy Kreme has about 450 stores in more than 20 countries. Most stores are franchised.) After a huge wave of success and buzz in the early 2000’s, when it went public, Krispy Kreme began to experience financial struggles starting in 2004. But the QSR has been making a major comeback. In its latest quarter, Q3 FY 2012, ended in October 2011, Krispy Kreme reported a whopping 95.8% jump in net income (pushing per-share earnings to about seven cents, versus three cents for the year-ago period, according to Zacks), an overall revenue gain of 9.4%, and a same-store sales gain of 4% (marking the twelfth consecutive quarter of same-store gains). For fiscal 2013, Krispy Kreme is now projecting opening up to 10 company-owned and up to 15 franchise-owned domestic stores, and more than 60 international, franchise-owned stores, and EPS in the range of 35 to 41 cents.
A new Pew study finds people are increasingly pruning their online social networks and restricting access to their profiles in the wake of heightened privacy concerns. Nearly two-thirds (63%) have deleted people from friend lists, up from 56% in 2009. A majority (58%) also limit access to their profiles so only friends can see them. Further, 44% deleted comments from their profiles, up from 36% in 2009, and 37% have removed their names from photos in which they were tagged, up from 30%. Women are especially active in controlling their social media presence. For example, 67% of women have “unfriended” people in their network, and the same proportion have opted to set the highest privacy restrictions on their profiles. By contrast, only 48% of men have chosen the highest privacy settings. Men are also more likely than women to choose partially private or fully public settings. There is little difference in how people approach privacy in social media based on age. “When it comes to basic privacy settings, users of all ages are equally likely to choose a private, semi-private or public setting for their profile. There are no significant variations across age groups,” stated the report by Pew’s Internet &American Life Project. Highlighting that consistency, 58% of adults set their profiles so that only friends can see content they post--slightly less than the 62% of teens who do so. So parents and their teen children are of the same mind at least when it comes to social privacy settings. Like women, however, young adults were more assiduous than the general social networking population in culling friend lists and purging unwanted contacts. Among those 18-29, 71% have unfriended people compared to 63% of those 30-39 and 56% of people 50-64. Removing photo tags and comments is also more common among young users. In the former case, half of the 18-29 demo have deleted tags while 56% have erased comments from their profiles. That suggests younger users are more concerned about “reputation management” on social properties. Facebook has run into trouble in the past for having overly complicated privacy settings that left users frustrated and confused. In that vein, the study found about half (48%) had some difficulty in managing the controls on their profiles. The other half said controls “were not difficult at all” and just 2% described them as “very difficult.” Educated users were much more likely to report some challenges in managing their privacy controls. The majority (62%) of college graduates had some level of difficulty, compared to 42% of people with some college education. The Pew report noted that the complexity of privacy settings varies greatly across different social sites. While people are more actively curating their profiles, one in ten said they regret some of their own posts. Men are twice as likely to express misgiving about posts (15% versus 8%), and young adults are more likely than everyone else to regret oversharing, at a rate of 15%. The Pew report also underscored how Facebook has become the dominant social network in the last three years. More than nine in ten (93%) profile owners say that they have a profile on Facebook, up from 73% in 2009. The study findings were based on phone interviews conducted from April 26 to May 22, 2011, among a sample of 2,277 adults.
The availability of information about consumer electronics through social networks has changed the way people get information about their purchases, but the practice is still new enough that companies have an opportunity to enter the equation. According to a study from the Consumer Electronics Association, nearly a quarter of social media users say they “always or almost always” refer to their networks before purchasing a CE device, while 38% say reviews or comments by someone they know influenced their purchase decision. “There’s a huge opportunity for the industry to get some of the people who say they rarely or never do [online social media research] to start doing so,” Chris Ely, manager of industry analysis at the CEA, tells Marketing Daily. “The fact that almost 6 in 10 say they don’t do it before [purchasing] is an opportunity for retailers and manufacturers.” That inkling is borne out by consumers considered “high-engagement users” of social media (those who spend more than 13.5 hours a week on their social media sites). Among them, 65% say they “always or almost always” refer to their networks before purchase, while 84% were influenced by reviews or comments from someone they know. High-engagement users were also more likely to be influenced by ads and promotions than overall users (71% vs. 23%), and more than half (53%) of those high-engagement users searched for a coupon code or discount on social media. However, fewer than half (42%) of all consumers who researched CE products on social media websites prior to purchase searched for a coupon or discount. Offering discounts or coupons via social media was also an enticing way to get consumers to like or follow their brand on social media, Ely says. “Fifty-five percent of social media users said that discounts and promotions drove them to friend or follow a page, followed by contests at 42%,” Ely says. “We have a lot of opportunities out there, and I think people who are looking for bargains or discounts, there’s a great opportunity to use social media to promote products.”
It’s no secret that 18- to-34-year-olds continue to redefine media consumption; new Nielsen research explains why. Along with NM Incite, Nielsen found this demo -- christened “Generation C” -- is taking their personal connections to new levels, devices, and experiences. The latest U.S. Census reports that consumers 18-34 make up 23% of the U.S. population, yet they represent a particularly large portion of consumers watching online video -- 27% -- visiting social networking/blog sites -- 27% -- owning tablets -- 33% -- and using a smartphone -- 39%. With an array of online video content to choose from, consumers increased their monthly online video time in the third quarter of 2011 by 7% from the same period last year. During October 2011, YouTube was the top destination for online video content, accounting for nearly half -- 45% -- of Americans’ total streaming time, while social networks/blogs garnered the most Internet time overall. The majority of mobile phone time was consumed by app usage, with social networking apps -- accounting for the nearly 6% of mobile time. Consumers are increasingly multitasking across various screens. Fifty-seven percent of smartphone and tablet owners checked email while watching a TV program -- their top activity -- while 44% visited a social networking site. Advertisers that are worried consumers might miss their message should note that 19% of smartphone and tablet owners searched for product information, and 16% looked up coupons or deals while the television was on. While nearly all social media users -- 97% -- access social networking sites from their computers, NM Incite, a Nielsen McKinsey company, found that females are more likely than men to read social media content from their eReaders, while men are more likely than women to access their social content from an Internet-enabled TV or gaming console. Also of note, by the end of 2011, NM Incite tracked over 181 million blogs around the world -- up from 36 million in 2006. Three of the top 10 social networks in the U.S. during October of 2011 were true blogs -- Blogger, WordPress.com and Tumblr -- with a combined 80 million unique visitors. Among the top social networks, Tumblr has shown the strongest growth in visitors, more than doubling its audience from last year. Mobile, meanwhile, is transforming into a powerful commerce tool, facilitating consumer transactions and access to real-time information and deals. Twenty-nine percent of smartphone owners use their phone for shopping-related activities and more than half of mobile users are repeat visitors to daily deal sites. The Groupon app is the 10th most popular app on the iOS platform and ranks 22nd on Android devices. Finally, Nielsen warns that home entertainment landscape is becoming increasingly complex as consumers are presented with a greater variety of ways to consume content, especially with the addition of digital streaming and movie downloads via the Web.
Asserting that content has “passed the crown” from traditional media to online, Wall Street equity researcher Pivotal Research Group initiated coverage of three ad-supported jewels -- Google, Facebook and Yahoo -- with strong ratings. “The adage ‘content is a king’ was always somewhat subjective,’” writes Pivotal’s Brian Wieser, a long-time Madison Avenue forecaster who authored the report, adding: “But on the Web, the argument content is king is difficult if not impossible to make in the long-run, in our opinion: what is important are infrastructure, platforms and tools controlled by Google, Facebook and others.” Wieser assigned “buy” ratings to Google (his top Internet stock pick), and Yahoo, and hasn’t put an explicit rating on a still-pre-IPO Facebook yet, but estimated its “target value” as $81 billion. What those Big 3 Internet players have in common, Wieser said, is that they are not simply content–dependent, but are superior platforms for users to consume content, and have the best technologies for monetizing that with data about the users. “Advertisers are increasingly indifferent to the context in which messages appear, at least when compared with other media,” he explained, adding: “Vast and growing arrays of data ensure that audiences (or at least the data-driven attributes which imply the characteristics of any given advertising impression) become the most important basis for delivering commercial messages in the long run. Efficient re-aggregation of fragmented audiences also becomes increasingly critical.” Wieser said Google was Pivotal’s top pick among Internet stocks, because while “paid search remains a juggernaut,” he believes it is actually Google’s “strategic dominance in ad-tech” that makes it most valuable to investors. “Future growth of Internet-related advertising will ride on infrastructure, and Google owns much of it,” he asserted.
To mark its 75th anniversary and connect face-to-face with consumers across the country, Krispy Kreme has launched a “Glaze the Nation” Tour. Over the next year, brand ambassadors will make stops from coast to coast in a restored, branded, 1960-vintage Flxible Starliner bus -- a vehicle deemed to have “just the right balance of nostalgia, retro and cool,” according to SVP/CMO Dwayne Chambers. "Because our purpose is to 'touch and enhance lives through the joy that is Krispy Kreme' we felt it was important to get out of our shops and take the party on the road," Chambers says. The bus tour is also meant to pay tribute to founder Vernon Rudolph’s use of a small fleet of delivery trucks to build his nascent business in the early 1940’s, and continues to leverage the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based company’s associations with the NASCAR culture. The Krispy Kreme Cruiser is being operated for the brand by Richard Childress Racing, and the tour kicked off in Daytona, Fla. on Feb. 23 with an event featuring appearances by former NASCAR drivers Kyle, Richard and Austin Petty. The tour will make at least 500 scheduled stops at local fairs and festivals, major events and Krispy Kreme stops in 37 states, as well as “spontaneous” stops. In addition to samples of its Original Glazed doughnuts and other sweets, representatives will engage fans with games, prizes and a variety of giveaways. The cruiser is outfitted with a geo-navigator so that fans can track its location in real-time. Through a GlazeTheNation.com area on the brand’s site, and promotions and links from the brand’s Facebook and Twitter presences, they can also view photos and videos, read the tour guides’ blog (and get updates through Wordpress), interact with the guides and follow the tour’s Twitter conversation. Fans are also being encouraged to tag themselves with Cruiser on Foursquare, pin the brand on Pinterest, and follow it on Instagram. Those who register as “friends of Krispy Kreme” can also receive emailed tour updates. Chambers, a veteran of Fuddrucker’s, Noodles & Co., Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and Sonic Drive-In who became Krispy Kreme’s CMO in September 2010, early on declared his intention to use television and traditional media more selectively and pump up social media -– in part because of its international reach. (In addition to some 230 U.S. stores and 10,000 outlets/drive-throughs in U.S. grocery, convenience and mass-merchant retailers, Krispy Kreme has about 450 stores in more than 20 countries. Most stores are franchised.) After a huge wave of success and buzz in the early 2000’s, when it went public, Krispy Kreme began to experience financial struggles starting in 2004. But the QSR has been making a major comeback. In its latest quarter, Q3 FY 2012, ended in October 2011, Krispy Kreme reported a whopping 95.8% jump in net income (pushing per-share earnings to about seven cents, versus three cents for the year-ago period, according to Zacks), an overall revenue gain of 9.4%, and a same-store sales gain of 4% (marking the twelfth consecutive quarter of same-store gains). For fiscal 2013, Krispy Kreme is now projecting opening up to 10 company-owned and up to 15 franchise-owned domestic stores, and more than 60 international, franchise-owned stores, and EPS in the range of 35 to 41 cents.
A new Pew study finds people are increasingly pruning their online social networks and restricting access to their profiles in the wake of heightened privacy concerns. Nearly two-thirds (63%) have deleted people from friend lists, up from 56% in 2009. A majority (58%) also limit access to their profiles so only friends can see them. Further, 44% deleted comments from their profiles, up from 36% in 2009, and 37% have removed their names from photos in which they were tagged, up from 30%. Women are especially active in controlling their social media presence. For example, 67% of women have “unfriended” people in their network, and the same proportion have opted to set the highest privacy restrictions on their profiles. By contrast, only 48% of men have chosen the highest privacy settings. Men are also more likely than women to choose partially private or fully public settings. There is little difference in how people approach privacy in social media based on age. “When it comes to basic privacy settings, users of all ages are equally likely to choose a private, semi-private or public setting for their profile. There are no significant variations across age groups,” stated the report by Pew’s Internet &American Life Project. Highlighting that consistency, 58% of adults set their profiles so that only friends can see content they post--slightly less than the 62% of teens who do so. So parents and their teen children are of the same mind at least when it comes to social privacy settings. Like women, however, young adults were more assiduous than the general social networking population in culling friend lists and purging unwanted contacts. Among those 18-29, 71% have unfriended people compared to 63% of those 30-39 and 56% of people 50-64. Removing photo tags and comments is also more common among young users. In the former case, half of the 18-29 demo have deleted tags while 56% have erased comments from their profiles. That suggests younger users are more concerned about “reputation management” on social properties. Facebook has run into trouble in the past for having overly complicated privacy settings that left users frustrated and confused. In that vein, the study found about half (48%) had some difficulty in managing the controls on their profiles. The other half said controls “were not difficult at all” and just 2% described them as “very difficult.” Educated users were much more likely to report some challenges in managing their privacy controls. The majority (62%) of college graduates had some level of difficulty, compared to 42% of people with some college education. The Pew report noted that the complexity of privacy settings varies greatly across different social sites. While people are more actively curating their profiles, one in ten said they regret some of their own posts. Men are twice as likely to express misgiving about posts (15% versus 8%), and young adults are more likely than everyone else to regret oversharing, at a rate of 15%. The Pew report also underscored how Facebook has become the dominant social network in the last three years. More than nine in ten (93%) profile owners say that they have a profile on Facebook, up from 73% in 2009. The study findings were based on phone interviews conducted from April 26 to May 22, 2011, among a sample of 2,277 adults.
The availability of information about consumer electronics through social networks has changed the way people get information about their purchases, but the practice is still new enough that companies have an opportunity to enter the equation. According to a study from the Consumer Electronics Association, nearly a quarter of social media users say they “always or almost always” refer to their networks before purchasing a CE device, while 38% say reviews or comments by someone they know influenced their purchase decision. “There’s a huge opportunity for the industry to get some of the people who say they rarely or never do [online social media research] to start doing so,” Chris Ely, manager of industry analysis at the CEA, tells Marketing Daily. “The fact that almost 6 in 10 say they don’t do it before [purchasing] is an opportunity for retailers and manufacturers.” That inkling is borne out by consumers considered “high-engagement users” of social media (those who spend more than 13.5 hours a week on their social media sites). Among them, 65% say they “always or almost always” refer to their networks before purchase, while 84% were influenced by reviews or comments from someone they know. High-engagement users were also more likely to be influenced by ads and promotions than overall users (71% vs. 23%), and more than half (53%) of those high-engagement users searched for a coupon code or discount on social media. However, fewer than half (42%) of all consumers who researched CE products on social media websites prior to purchase searched for a coupon or discount. Offering discounts or coupons via social media was also an enticing way to get consumers to like or follow their brand on social media, Ely says. “Fifty-five percent of social media users said that discounts and promotions drove them to friend or follow a page, followed by contests at 42%,” Ely says. “We have a lot of opportunities out there, and I think people who are looking for bargains or discounts, there’s a great opportunity to use social media to promote products.”
It’s no secret that 18- to-34-year-olds continue to redefine media consumption; new Nielsen research explains why. Along with NM Incite, Nielsen found this demo -- christened “Generation C” -- is taking their personal connections to new levels, devices, and experiences. The latest U.S. Census reports that consumers 18-34 make up 23% of the U.S. population, yet they represent a particularly large portion of consumers watching online video -- 27% -- visiting social networking/blog sites -- 27% -- owning tablets -- 33% -- and using a smartphone -- 39%. With an array of online video content to choose from, consumers increased their monthly online video time in the third quarter of 2011 by 7% from the same period last year. During October 2011, YouTube was the top destination for online video content, accounting for nearly half -- 45% -- of Americans’ total streaming time, while social networks/blogs garnered the most Internet time overall. The majority of mobile phone time was consumed by app usage, with social networking apps -- accounting for the nearly 6% of mobile time. Consumers are increasingly multitasking across various screens. Fifty-seven percent of smartphone and tablet owners checked email while watching a TV program -- their top activity -- while 44% visited a social networking site. Advertisers that are worried consumers might miss their message should note that 19% of smartphone and tablet owners searched for product information, and 16% looked up coupons or deals while the television was on. While nearly all social media users -- 97% -- access social networking sites from their computers, NM Incite, a Nielsen McKinsey company, found that females are more likely than men to read social media content from their eReaders, while men are more likely than women to access their social content from an Internet-enabled TV or gaming console. Also of note, by the end of 2011, NM Incite tracked over 181 million blogs around the world -- up from 36 million in 2006. Three of the top 10 social networks in the U.S. during October of 2011 were true blogs -- Blogger, WordPress.com and Tumblr -- with a combined 80 million unique visitors. Among the top social networks, Tumblr has shown the strongest growth in visitors, more than doubling its audience from last year. Mobile, meanwhile, is transforming into a powerful commerce tool, facilitating consumer transactions and access to real-time information and deals. Twenty-nine percent of smartphone owners use their phone for shopping-related activities and more than half of mobile users are repeat visitors to daily deal sites. The Groupon app is the 10th most popular app on the iOS platform and ranks 22nd on Android devices. Finally, Nielsen warns that home entertainment landscape is becoming increasingly complex as consumers are presented with a greater variety of ways to consume content, especially with the addition of digital streaming and movie downloads via the Web.
Tablets help networks push viewers to watch TV live. Speaking at the OMMA Tablet Revolution, Dennis Adamovich, senior vp of brand digital activation/GM Festivals, Turner Entertainment Networks, says for the late night show, "Conan", TBS has develop "sync" contents for the live airing of the "Conan" show. "It is such a social experience," says Adamovich. Dominique Nguyen, director of Bravo Emerging Media for NBC Universal agrees that is the direction it wants to go for ira viewers. "We want them to be watching live; we want them to stay away from DVRs."
The Gartner Predicts 2012 special report highlights how the control of technology and technology-driven decisions is shifting out of the hands of IT organizations. New forces that are not easily controlled by IT are pushing themselves to the forefront of IT spending. Specifically, the forces of cloud computing, social media and social networking, mobility and information management are all evolving at a rapid pace. Business unit stakeholders often recognize the value of new technology before IT departments can harness it. In addition, emerging markets are growing rapidly in terms of technology expenditures and influence:
It’s taken a while for the Internet to shift from being the text-only medium of its early days to the image-dominated medium it’s increasingly becoming. In fact, it’s barely a decade since Internet users could post on photo-sharing sites such as SmugMug (founded 2002) and Flickr (founded 2004). There are now over six billion photos on Flickr, although Facebook dwarfs that number with six billion photo uploads per month and a total of 90 billion photos on its servers, according to Justin Mitchell of Facebook Photos. Moving images are even more recent. It’s just under seven years since YouTube was founded at a time when video accounted for virtually 0% of Internet traffic. Now, video accounts for over 50% of Internet traffic and will reach 90% within three years, according to Cisco’s VP for Marketing and Emerging Technologies, David Hsieh. Responding to people’s preferences, the Internet is becoming increasingly visual. As IBM’s former chief strategist Irving Wladawsky-Berger sees things, it’s because “in the physical world we interact with each other in a very visual way … now that we have the technologies to add a more visual capability, we can make all IT-based applications much more visual and human over time.” The trend is also apparent in the rapid rise of Infographics as a way of presenting complex information quickly and digestibly. Technologically, everything is coming together to serve people’s tendency to favor visual content. Along with massive remote storage capacity, we now have high-capacity wireless data connections that can carry even large video files fast; we have graphics processors and brilliant screens that offer vivid colors, sharp resolution and HD video on devices of any size, from smartphones to tablets to televisions. Add to this the fact that 80% of Internet users gather health information online and the implications for healthcare communications are clear. Social media and Pinterest It’s people’s natural response to visual information that has made Pinterest the hottest social media website of the moment. Describing itself as a virtual pinboard, it enables users to grab stills and videos online, organize them and share them with other Pinterest users and with other social media favorites such as Twitter and Facebook. For the time being at least, Pinterest has stolen the limelight from the big names of social media. According to comScore, it was the third-fastest-growing site in January 2012. ComScore VP Andrew Lipsman said that after attracting 418,000 unique visitors in May 2011, Pinterest had surged to 4.9 million visitors in November 2011. He described Pinterest as an exceptionally sticky site that keeps it users engaged for long periods of time. Pinterest is different from other social media sites in several important ways, which is what has enabled it to create its own niche in the social media ecosystem. Unlike Facebook, it’s not a destination where users go to swap chat with images and links thrown in; it’s a destination where people post images of things, with comments. As a Forbes blog put it, Facebook is like a bar while Pinterest is like a craft fair – a social network of stuff, rather than a social network of people. Unlike Twitter, it’s not a streaming timeline of words and links that disappear after a day or two. It’s highly visual, and it lasts. Unlike YouTube, it’s visually dense and includes still images. Unlike Tumblr, Pinterest enables users to create densely-packed “boards” or sets of images grouped by theme, with each image automatically linked to its source. Some commentators describe it as a virtual mood board; some refer to it as part of the content curation boom. Dr. Christopher Long, a professor at Ouachita Baptist University, sees Pinterest boards as being like its users’ personal happiness collages that represent “things that I appreciate, that I desire, and that express who I am, whether the things are cupcakes, shirtless David Beckham, or an inspirational quotation.” Pinterest and healthcare In contrast with the main social media platforms, Pinterest has been adopted early and enthusiastically by brands and marketers, including healthcare brands. Although it’s a social media platform, it doesn’t need a single-named individual to generate the content. On most social media, brands can look like out of place among all the named individuals; on Pinterest, they look perfectly at home. Pinterest is primarily about showing stuff with the possibility of building relationships, rather than building relationships as a means of showing stuff. Consumers can use it as a visual “wish list” of what they desire, brands can use it as a shop window of the experience they offer. With its visuals laid out in sumptuous, inviting spread and automatic links to source images, it’s not surprising that Pinterest is generating more referral traffic to websites than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined; if you like the image, you click on it and go to the original. Lurking beneath the surface is a very clever social commerce play. It’s a natural online location for apparel brands such as Gap and retailers such as West Elm and Nordstrom. It’s also proving to be an interesting place for healthcare brands to experiment, even though health does not yet have its own category on Pinterest. At the time of writing, the Summit Medical Group of New Jersey has seven Pinterest boards, including a set of brief “Medical Monday” videos on topics such as Seasonal Affective Disorder and The Challenge of Obesity. Baylor Health Care System has nine boards, including Interactive Health Quizzes and Family Health. One reason for healthcare brands to use Pinterest is that the current user demographic skews female; women tend to be the healthcare buyers for their families. Another is that it provides another concentrated and appealing “touch point” to reach healthcare consumers and bring relevant content to their attention. However, the most compelling reason of all is that it enables healthcare brands to pack together an emotive set of still and video images relevant to their patients without irksome content management or web design; they can “pin” images from their own sites together with relevant images from third-party sites (e.g., health-related book covers from online booksellers). In a spare hour or so, a healthcare professional can assemble a “best of” board of photos, pictures, charts, infographics and videos. It’s early, and the possibilities, so far, appear pretty boundless. Visualizations creating entirely new educational venues for disease states and therapies and new depictions of patient journeys that open up a whole new kind of storytelling for brands are just some of the applications. With Pinterest, any healthcare brand that has already invested in visual assets can extend its reach at minimal cost of time, money and effort. With so little cost involved, the question is not “Why would you bother?” but rather “Why would you not bother?”