Pinterest’s latest campaign looks back at life before social media, and saying that the best thing that you can do online is to find a reason to go offline. This all feeds into Pinterest’s uniqueness, that it’s a place for inspiration to plan your life, not the place to run your life as many social platforms do, hooking users into the dopamine hit of scrolling, watching and liking other people’s portrayal of what (they think!) their best life should look like.
Nearly half of U.S. teens say they spend too much time on social media, with many saying it has a negative effect on people their age, so it comes as no surprise that many countries are considering social media bans. What’s clear is that somewhere along the way, watching other people’s lives replaced living one’s own.
Now, Pinterest is launching its latest brand campaign that raises a counterpoint: calling out the cost of constant social media consumption and offering a different path forward…. basically to go and live your life offline!
At the center of the launch is a new 60 second film entitled “How did they do it?”, produced entirely in-house by Pinterest’s House of Creative, featuring old home movies and photos submitted by Pinterest employees from their family archives. It captures the freedom of a more authentic pre-social media world.
Alongside the 60-second film, Pinterest will debut a 30-second campaign film and additional creative assets from May 1 across TV, cinema, out of home and digital channels.
Most platforms are engineered to keep you scrolling through other people’s lives. Pinterest is engineered to get you off the app and into yours. That’s a fundamentally different value proposition, and this campaign is our boldest statement of that yet. We’re not just launching creative, we’re making a case for what the internet should actually be.
– Claudine Cheever, Chief Marketing Officer, Pinterest
This campaign builds on Pinterest’s larger commitment to promoting healthier digital habits. Most recently, CEO Bill Ready publicly urged governments to ban social media for kids under 16. At Coachella this year, Pinterest also debuted the first-ever phone-free activation, creating a real-world space where visitors could disconnect from their screens and reconnect with authentic experiences.
