HypeLife Brands Agrees: All Signs Point to Pinterest

To keep pace with the rapidly evolving cultural footprint of Generation Y, a generation characterized often by its inability to be characterized, HypeLife Brands has now added the management of clients' Pinterest boards to an already diverse, progressive roster of brand development services.

In Pinterest, Principal and Founder Curt Cuscino thinks they’ve not only found a unique way for brands to engage with potential customers, but a way that’s very much still up for debate. “Pinterest is still relatively new to the social game, especially when compared to social pillars like Facebook and Twitter,” says Cuscino.

“Brands both large and small have yet to figure it out.”

Pinterest has a simple message for its users: “…organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web.” With such a clear, concise vision, Pinterest may just be the web’s easiest, most engaging form of window-shopping to come along in years. And that hands-off approach appears to be resonating with an audience that’s growing rapidly.

To Cuscino, who oversees offices in Kansas City and Los Angeles, his company’s ability to leverage the potential of Pinterest in the coming years is huge. “Pinterest is the fastest growing website in history,” he says. “As a company committed to spreading the word of our clients, no business can afford to ignore that's a powerful statistic.”

Cuscino noted several revealing trends about Pinterest and its band of devoted users. For instance, how female users outnumber male users 60-40 and skew 18-34 in age, or how the average female user makes $50,000 a year. He also noted that in May 2011, Pinterest debuted to 418,000 unique visitors per month. By January 2012, that number had grown to nearly 12 million unique visitors over the same 31-day period.

To marketers everywhere, content may still be king, but visuals are making their push, as Pinterest’s rise comes right alongside Facebook’s recent purchase of the mobile photo startup Instagram for a hair-raising $1 billion. The takeaway for the HypeLife team is simple: For a generation that’s used to being told what to do or what to buy, what could be more elementary than a site composed of nothing but pictures?

Many brands have already created their pages, with board counts approaching the hundreds. With the option to like a picture or even an entire board, consumers are professing their opinion, or put another way, their support, for any brand that catches their eye. This is an exciting new way to build a following for up-and-coming brands, and even for the established bookends of the industry.

While the last decade signaled a significant shift from traditional advertising, Pinterest promises to continue that trend. And to Cuscino, it’s an option that clients of all shapes and sizes should consider. “The beauty of the Internet is that marketing no longer has to rely solely on selling,” says Cuscino. “Now, there are inexpensive, potentially powerful ways to supplement a marketing strategy, like substituting a costly drive-time billboard for 10 to 15 boards on Pinterest.

“And for Generation Y, the generation that every marketer in America is targeting, Pinterest will win that battle almost every time.”

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About HypeLife Brands

HypeLife Brands is a leading brand development + startup marketing agency focused on helping B2C lifestyle startups, SMBs and challenger brands engage Millennials. Key client industries include apparel and streetwear, musicians and recording artists, entertainment and extreme sports.

Founded in 2001, the agency is headquartered in coastal Oceanside, California.