Social image-sharing site Pinterest is the focus of a new campaign by Volvo Cars of North America. The promotion marks the launch of Volvo’s Pinterest channel, and asks users to create a “Volvo Joyride” pinboard to win a four-day lease of a new Volvo model, plus additional road trip perks.
Pinterest users are asked to describe their ideal road trip by creating a “Volvo Joyride” pinboard anytime between September 5 and September 26. Participants have to pin the Volvo model S60 T5 AWD, and anything else that makes their road trip great, including: destination, stops, attractions, outfits, playlists/songs, and more.
On the “Volvo Joyride” Pinterest board, users are asked: “Ready to take a fall #roadtrip? Pin your #Volvo adventure for a chance to win your ultimate #VolvoJoyride!”
The winners get a four-day lease (the perfect amount of time for a weekend road trip) of the S60 T5 AWD and additional perks, including a two-night hotel stay, and gift cards for gas, food, beverages, clothing and music. Three winners will be selected based on those with the most re-pins, likes and comments.
Volvo also looked to design and lifestyle blogger Victoria Smith to help promote the campaign, by making her own Volvo Joyride board and YouTube video to share with her over 473,000 followers on Pinterest. Her board included images of the car as well as clothes, postcards, landscapes, hotels and music, and several of her posts pushed the contest: “If you’d like to win your own Volvo Joyride go to the Pinterest Contest Board http://pinterest.com/volvocarsus/volvo-joyride/.”
Since the soft launch of the brand’s Pinterest page in August, Volvo US has added five boards, 77 pins, and accumulated nearly 900 followers. While these numbers are still quite small, they’re not too shabby for a brand that’s only been pushing Pinterest for less than a month. The “Volvo Joyride” campaign began on September 5 with just 155 Pinterest followers, and has added nearly 750 followers in just three weeks.
Volvo wanted to capitalize on Pinterest’s ability to showcase the ‘lifestyle’ aspect of the brand: “We built out the first pinboards to highlight the design elements that make our cars unique, display how pet friendly our cars are, how versatile your life can be living with a Volvo and our various concept cars over the years,” said Linda Gangeri, manager of marketing platforms and technologies (ClickZ).
Citing Volvo as “more of a female brand than a male brand,” she also chose Pinterest for its target audience of females ages 25-54 years old. Another reason to focus on Pinterest for this campaign? “Users who engage with a brand and pin a brand’s content have a high intention to purchase those items that they pin,” Gangeri told ClickZ. “Also, the high quality referrals that brands are seeing from Pinterest are indicative of the mindset of their user base. We want to be where the high quality engagement/leads are.”
Ultimately, the brand is hoping that Pinterest will drive traffic back to the Volvo website. Volvo believes Pinterest will yield real results: the brand is dedicating 50% of its social efforts to the site, along with one of the brand’s three community managers, according to Digiday.
Joe Barbagallo, social media manager at Volvo, told Digiday “We’re also aiming to change the brand’s perception and to grow our Pinterest audience.” Volvo wants to reach pinners on a platform “where the Volvo brand is relevant.”
Volvo US is also promoting the campaign via its Facebook page (with over 253,000 likes) and the brand’s Twitter account (with over 68,000 followers).
[tweet https://twitter.com/volvocarsus/status/248466611034529794]
What do you think – is the number of Pinterest followers important for Volvo, or just their level of engagement with the promotion? How effective was using a Pinterest ‘influencer’ to inspire others to create “Volvo Joyride” boards?
