First there were "save-able" banner ads -- now there are pinnable ones.
Gucci unveiled this week a banner ad with a small "Pin it" button on the bottom left-hand corner. The ad is part of Gucci's Fall/Winter 2012 digital campaign, and will run on five sites: WSJ.com, Polyvore, Style.com, Lifestyle Mirror and New York Magazine's fashion blog The Cut, a Gucci spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to Mashable.
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Clicking "Pin it," will bring up two images to share on Pinterest: A full-size image of the ad, and a product shot of the shoes it features (see below). On Pinterest, both pins link directly to Gucci's e-commerce site.
The ad was developed in collaboration with Triple Point, whose analytics platform will track the ad as it's shared across Pinterest -- if it is, in fact, shared. The ad's dual focus on one model's face and another model's shoes doesn't make it obviously pinnable, in my opinion -- Is one pinning the shoes, the photograph or the ad itself? Consumers don't know they have multiple (and better) options until they click on the "Pin it" button.
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Still, it's an interesting concept. Although most banner ads are naturally pinnable, the appearance of a "Pin It" button should prompt more viewers to do just that.
Gucci's presence on Pinterest is still fledgling: The Italian-based design house has attracted a following of a little more than 3,100 with its 432 pins. (Michael Kors, by contrast, has 1,200 pins and more than 53,000 followers.) But as we know already, having high engagement and reach on Pinterest doesn't necessarily require a strong brand presence on the platform itself -- many brands saw high referral numbers from the site before they event launched brand accounts simply because early users were pinning content they had already made available elsewhere online.
Thumbnail courtesy of Flickr, achimh
This story originally published on Mashable here.