Pinterest keen to attract luxury labels via its affluent Gen Z users

Pinterest has always stood out in the rapidly changing social media landscape. With 482 million users worldwide, including 18 million in France, the social network is more than ever relying on its uniqueness to compensate for an audience that is smaller than that of other competitors. Pinterest is especially keen to attract luxury labels, placing the emphasis on the growing number of Gen Z users among its ranks, young individuals who, crucially, are on average reportedly wealthier than their peers active on other social media.

This is what prompted Louis Vuitton to launch a Pinterest campaign focused on its collaboration with Yayoi Kusama, and Carolina Herrera to do the same for its Good Girl Maxi Glaze lipstick. Pinterest, whose main advertisers include names like LVMH, L’Oréal, La Redoute and eBay, has also begun to collaborate with Yves Saint Laurent Beauté, Guerlain and MatchesFashion.

Pinterest has identified among its users an “audience for luxury,” consisting of individuals from all over the world who have searched for or pinned on their boards at least one of 60 luxury labels. Pinterest did not specify the exact number of these users, simply stating they add up to “a few tens of millions.” It did state that about 80% of the individuals in the cluster are women, and 70% of them are under the age of 35.

“Gen Z [users] currently account for 40% of our global audience, and it’s also a segment that is growing rapidly, their numbers having increased by 22% in one year,” said Kelly Emanuelli, who oversees Pinterest’s luxury business from Paris, speaking to FashionNetwork.com. According to Emanuelli, this audience is a by-product of Pinterest’s difference from other social media. “Young users feel confident, they feel they are in a positive environment, without ‘haters’ or negative comments, the latter being an existing but little-used feature,” said Emanuelli.

Among Pinterest users consuming luxury items, one third reportedly has an annual income in excess of $100,000 dollars, according to a PA Consulting survey conducted last spring. These individuals are “more affluent than buyers on other social media,” a feature that Pinterest now intends to exploit.

Curation of ideas

According to the PA survey, three out of five luxury goods buyers said they use Pinterest to search for luxury labels and products. In fact, 60% of them said they are open to Pinterest ads if they refer to luxury items. Most importantly, 85% of them stated that they would be receptive to these adverts. 

“Our advertisement streams are considered additional, and non-intrusive, because our business model is based on curating ideas,” said Emanuelli. Here again, Pinterest differs from other social media, while ad rejection is prompting Facebook, Instagram and X to offer paid subscriptions to avoid featuring ads.

Art, fashion, home decoration, beauty and travel are Pinterest’s five main content categories. Labels have the possibility of publishing their entire product catalogue, with one-click referrals to product pages on their websites and e-shops. These links can also be pinned on the custom boards that users can create through the Shuffles app, recently deployed by Pinterest.

Another reason Pinterest can put forward to attract brands is that, according to a Reach3 study conducted last year in 10 countries, nearly 80% of users employ Pinterest to prep future purchases. Making it a strategic priority for luxury labels to have a presence on Pinterest, whose quality audience is its main argument to capture advertisers.