Our Thinking

Our views on marketing, innovation, communications, social media, organisational change, technology, creativity and of course, happiness.

Can Pinterest work for B2B?

Over the Summer, as we all bathed in the Olympic glow, the marketing world rumbled with news that Pinterest was proving ineffective at converting the massive traffic it was attracting into sales for participating brands. The upstart cousin of Facebook and Twitter appeared to be losing its lustre in the eyes of marketers. However, this week I stumbled across a startling infographic from the Fast Company on the Power of Pinterest. The stats it contains contradict these gloomy assertions and reveal why brands have persisted with this platform. The infographic shows that 80% of the top 15 Pinterest categories are related to commerce. Moreover, a converted Pinterest user’s average order value is $179.36 versus $80.22 for a Facebook visitor. Other reports suggest that visitors to a brand’s Pinterest boards are twice as likely to convert into sales as those on brand Facebook pages. There seems to be something addicitve in the intensely visual, categorised and ordered character of Pinterest that drives an extraordinary level of consumption in its users.

So it seems Pinterest is now a key item in the B2C comms toolkit, outshining the behemoths of the social world, but how can it be harnessed to drive B2B marketing? Indeed, does Pinterest have any use in this category at all? There are some B2B companies who seem to have adopted effective approaches to this new medium. For example technology company AMD has a great presence on Pinterest, with 33 boards, out of which only 3 directly promote AMD’s products. The rest showcase related points of interest, such as new gadgets and technology innovations. These position the company as interested, knowledgable and passionate about their field. They encourage user interaction and nurture trust between the company and their clients. Whether they have seen increased sales from this activity I do not know, however it strikes me as an extremely effective and engaging brand awareness exercise.

Even if you don’t have physical products, but like Make Happy provide profesional services, AMD highlights some approaches you can take to promotion via Pinterest. As well as product and industry related boards, the company also have ones which allude to their culture. Boards such as’must reads’ reveal something of the character of the people who work for the company, whilst one entitled ‘work hard, play hard’ suggests a young, dynamic workforce. If your business is about selling your people, then showcasing the positive aspects of your organisational culture, introducing visitors the expertise and personalities you have within your company and expressing the qualities which make your people unique are powerful ways to raise awareness of, and engage visitors with, your brand.

Serious ROI for business to business on Pinterest has yet to be demonstrated, however with 1.9 billion Pinterest page views worldwide monthly and counting, we would be foolish to ignore its potential.

Short Form Films win Lovie Award!

Our longstanding partners at Short Form Film have just been awarded a Lovie award for animation for their WillShake film. Directed by Joe Talbot, one of the co-founders of the company, we think it is an impressive portrayal of the much loved Macbeth story by William Shakespeare in a way that can capture the imaginations of children and create excitement for his literary works.

Joe Talbot let us in on what was his inspiration for directing the film,

At school the idea of introducing Shakespeare to children under the age of 10 was unheard of. My feelings were, that like a foreign language, unless the seeds are sewed early it gets increasingly difficult to switch into the Bard. The difference with WillShake is that it is character driven, not plot. It is fun whilst still staying true to the most famous lines from each play which a parent could easily recite to their child.

We now need people to vote for the people’s Lovie Awards so check out the film and voting page below and would be great to hear your thoughts.

Vote WillShake
WillShake from Short Form Film Company on Vimeo.

The FT & Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award

The FT has announced the six books that have made this year’s shortlist. You can read an excerpt from each book here.

In an office dominated by women, we were particular taken by The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk-taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust by John Coates who asks why there are so few women traders, actually less than 5%. He asks whether it is because women have a different appetite to risk and they don’t like the macho environment. He rejects both of these explanations and goes on to point out that women often outperform men. Coates goes on to suggest a simple formula to help bring greater stability to the market;

“I like this policy of altering the biology of the market by increasing the number of women and older men in it. It strikes me as eminently sensible, and my hunch is that it would work. To argue for it one need not claim that women and older men are better risk takers than young men, just different. Difference in the markets means greater stability. There is, however, one point about which I have much more than a hunch, about which I am as certain as certain can be—that a financial community with a more even balance between men and women, young and old, could not possibly do any worse than the system we have now. For the one we have now created the credit crisis of 2007–8 and its ongoing aftershocks, and there is quite simply no worse outcome for a financial system.”

I wonder how reflects across other business sectors?

Can a global business be idealistic?

This is a question that the FT asked in their weekly feature Judgement Call. I was pleased that Rohit Deshpandé said that there is a growing movement towards living by a guiding set of principles regardless of the local views on how businesses should be run. Consultant and author, David Cushman, went further in the article saying; “Organisations have to remain true to their fundamental beliefs. There may be a short-term cost or loss from sticking to them but businesses built to succeed in today’s open economy must take a longer view because without consistency, trust disappears. Today’s winners are open businesses, those organisations that use their resources to create networks of people who care about the same things they do and who work with them to achieve shared goals.”

These align to our beliefs on how modern organisations should behave. Many companies and organisations are still struggling with their belief that they have to control all the communication about them, with the fact that in our modern, always on 24/7, this is increasingly impossible.

Elliot makes the FT’s Legal Innovator of the Year finals

We are delighted that Elliot Moss is a finalist in the Financial Times’ Legal Innovator of the Year. Elliot is the first non-lawyer to be included in the FT’s 10 most innovative individuals in the legal sector. Elliot is a shareholder in Make Happy and first worked with Jonathan at Leo Burnett where they both started on the graduate trainee scheme.

Google’s London HQ

I’m always surprised by how often clients neglect office design when considering their internal communications planning. Yet the office environment is a key part of the culture and communications of an organisation. It impacts how people work, the manner and the frequency they talk to each other and how information flows through the company structure. I read recently that in one company a redesign to a more open space resulted in a fall in email traffic of 50%.

So what makes great office design? Google’s London HQ is often vaunted as the paragon of inspirational office space, a celebration of creativity and individuality. In her recent, extremely frank article however, Lucy Kellaway takes a very different view. She argues that the excess of design and imagination in the Google offices is so overwhelming that it in fact dampens the potential for employees to create.

After reading it, I wondered, in 10 years time will pods and pool tables in offices seem as outdated and misguided as cubicles and corner offices seem now?

A great read for anyone thinking about how they organise their working environment.

Elizabeth Murdoch on the importance of values and purpose

In August Elizabeth Murdoch gave the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival. She talked compellingly about values and purpose, something very close to the heart of all of us here at Make Happy. She also threw down a challenge to government and business, arguing that success based solely on money is inherently dangerous and often leads to bad behaviour.

Here are a couple of quotes which particularly resonated with me. The full text of her speech is available here (http://bit.ly/RmY2G2).

“Personally, I believe one of the biggest lessons of the past year has been the need for any organisation to discuss, affirm and institutionalise a rigorous set of values based on an explicit statement of purpose.”

“We need to learn how to be comfortable with articulating purpose and reject the idea that money is the only effective measure of all things or that the free market is the only sorting mechanism. Do we have such faith in the imperatives of the market that we need have no will of our own other than to succeed on its terms? It’s us, human beings, we the people, who create the society we want, not profit. It is increasingly apparent that the absence of purpose – or of a moral language – within government, media or business, could become one of the most dangerous own goals for capitalism and for freedom.”

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OUR THINKING

Short Form Films win Lovie Award!

The FT & Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award

Can a global business be idealistic?

Elliot makes the FT’s Legal Innovator of the Year finals

Google’s London HQ

Elizabeth Murdoch on the importance of values and purpose

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