Capital One teamed up with digital agency RGA to launch its own Christmas countdown, The Capital One 12 Days of Pinterest Instant Win Game, to test the effectiveness of the visual platform.
“We’re experimenting with the platform. I think few brands have really struck gold on Pinterest yet,” says Mike Darne, Capital One’s senior director of social media. “We’re still figuring out ways to use it. A lot of retailers and fashion brands have been the first to leverage the platform. One of the key things that we’re trying to do with this campaign is to understand, can we get people to follow us?”
The campaign, which runs from December 12 to December 23, consists of 12 holiday-themed gift boards that consumers can click through in hopes of instantly securing one of the 10 daily $100 prepaid cards. On the 12th day, one winner will receive $4,500 worth of prepaid cards for the grand finale.
Upon clicking on a gift image, pinners are redirected to the either a blog or e-commerce site of one of the bank’s retail partners, including Best Buy and Neiman Marcus. Darne says the banking institution was able to connect with more retailers following its acquisition of HSBC this year.
Darne also notes that the Pinterest experiment ties in branding with a click-through component that aims to establish what pins are driving click-throughs, what pinners deemed relevant, and where consumers are spending their time.
“Some aspect of this will be driving brand metrics and brand preference,” Darne says. “The other piece of it is, through this campaign, we’ll understand how people click through, at what rate, and what gets them to click through.”
Additionally, Darne notes that some of the themed days, ranging from The Gift of Comfort and The Gift of Giving, were particularly selected to fit in with the Capital One brand, such as The Gift of Traveling board that ties into the Capital One Venture card.
“I’m a big believer in social channels, but you’ve got to find what resonates with the audience because you want them to engage with it,” he says. “It’s not something that you can just force on them, so you have to understand how people are using it, the audience that’s using it, and you have to deliver content that’s relevant to them.”
Although the campaign officially kicked off yesterday, Darne says Capital One has seen early success, including an increase in followers from about 200 to more than 2,000. He says Capital One intends to continue to use Pinterest in 2013, too. “My hope would be to really learn something from this,” he says. “We’ll have a sizable audience now to speak to.”
