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Home decór retailer CB2, Crate & Barrel's younger, slightly more affordable sister brand, is decorating a giant New York City apartment over the course of five days with the help of Pinterest. They're calling the stunt APT CB2.
CB2 tapped five interior decorators and designers who are popular in the world of boards, pins and hearts (i.e. have followers in the millions) and assigned each a different space, from the kitchen to the roof deck. The pinners choose three of each item to adorn their respective rooms; participants will choose their favorite of the three by "hearting" them. The pieces will be moved in, thereby collectively decorating an apartment in real time.
It's certainly one way for a home decór chain to take advantage of Pinterest users' affinity for design without actually paying for ads (thought they did pay Mother Advertising an estimated $1 million to execute the effort). The New York Times noted that, "More visitors to the website for CB2 [...] come from Pinterest, the virtual bulletin board, than any other social network."
Damian Bazadona, the president of Situation Interactive, a digital agency that specializes in arts and entertainment events, gave the promotion two thumbs up. He told the NYT that Mother and CB2 are "combining the physical and the digital world, they're creating real-world examples of how their furniture looks and feels, and they're doing it in a fun, interactive, contemporary way [...] A lot of times these campaigns become overcomplicated, and they ask the user to do like 12 different things. But this is relatively simple, and it's effective."
· APT CB2 [Official Site]
· Home Décor Retailer CB2 Invites Pinterest Users to Furnish Apartment [NYT]
· FTC Slaps Cole Haan For 'Inauthentic Content' On Pinterest [Racked]
· Paid Advertising Is Now Headed to Pinterest, Too [Racked]