The Apartment That Pinterest Built: CB2 Redesigns Social Engagement

In May, 873 Broadway in New York City became the epicenter of a truly innovative social media campaign from home decor chain CB2, as an empty apartment was furnished from start to finish in five days, with designers transforming the blank canvases of five separate rooms into livable spaces – all based on the preferences of Pinterest users. So how did this campaign work, exactly? CB2 selected five popular designers, stylists and lifestyle bloggers, each of whom was assigned to one of the rooms. Each of these five pinned many potential pieces for their rooms, and the items that received the most likes from other Pinterest users ultimately found a place in the room’s final layout – resulting in a decorating style CB2 calls “modern together.” As if this concept wasn’t intriguing enough, CB2 added another element of engagement by posting cameras and video crews in the apartment, documenting the events as they unfolded in real-time so that users could watch the rooms take shape around their selections via time-lapse photos. The Apt CB2 campaign was CB2's first venture into big brand advertising, and they entered the arena with a vengeance. By leveraging their own fan base combined with the followings of five popular designers, they created a powerful foundation of motivated participants, whose efforts and engagement in the campaign were rewarded through a unique real-time connection between the online world and the real world. The campaign is, in fact, a veritable showcase of savvy modern marketing strategies, and it offers some great takeaways for other brands looking to follow suit. Let’s examine the anatomy of the Apt CB2 campaign and uncover the secrets to its success:

Customer driven decision-making

In the era when traditional advertising reigned supreme, push marketing was the norm. But in today’s marketplace, word-of-mouth recommendations, reviews and in-store interactions now carry far more weight with consumers. As a result, contemporary marketing gives greater focus to the "pull." CB2 showed a masterful grasp of pull marketing in the Apt CB2 promotion, which gave users a vehicle by which they could make choices and have their voices heard in a way that was both tangible and immediate.

Real-time engagement

The ability for brands to interact directly with their customers is one of the hallmarks of the digital marketing era. And according to research presented at SXSW 2012, when that interaction occurs in real time, brand marketing gets a huge boost. So what kind of boost are we talking about here? The research noted a whole laundry list of benefits, including:

• More positive perceptions of brands
• Greater willingness to try a new product
• Greater willingness to recommend a product to friends and family
• Better performance of related marketing campaigns

The social celebrity factor

CB2 didn’t rely solely on the appeal of real-time interaction alone to drive the success of its campaign. After all, if a pouf lands in the living room of an apartment and nobody is watching, did it really land there at all? That’s why they cleverly added prominent design celebrities to the mix, guaranteeing that they’d get an immediate fusion of new eyes and new fingers eager to click their favorite selections. Just how much interest can a celebrity add to a marketing campaign? A lot, actually. Each of the five designers selected for the Apt CB2 campaign came to the promotion with a sizable fan base. Let’s take a look at the numbers based on their Pinterest following alone:

• Los Angeles design pro Ross Cassidy (dining room): 4.5 million
• San Francisco's Caitlin Flemming (office): 4 million
• New York interior designer Athena Calderone (bedroom): 5,200 (plus all the readers who follow Eye Swoon, her popular food and design website)
• Nashville brand manager Daniel Bear Hunley (living room): 1.6 million
• Los Angeles lifestyle and design blogger Justina Blakeney (rooftop): 1.2 million

Of course, not all of their followers would participate in Apt CB2, but even a small percentage of numbers like these is nothing to sneeze at.

There's a contest, too

This super-sized promotion isn't done yet, though. For those Pinterest fans who weren’t moved by the menu of celebrities or the fascination of real-time "vote and view" apartment decorating, Apt CB2 offered yet another draw – the chance to win a room furnished by CB2 valued at $5,000.

News coverage and PR

Needless to say, Apt CB2 has garnered a lot of interest in the news media. And that interest is accompanied by some extremely high-quality free publicity. We at Fame Foundry aren’t the only ones who’ve taken notice of this innovative campaign. News about Apt CB2 was picked up almost immediately by major outlets including Fast Company, the New York Times and International Business Times as well as a raft of lifestyle and home decor websites and blogs. CB2 has also supplemented their free exposure by placing paid advertising on relevant websites, notably Apartment Therapy.

Social integration

The real genius of the campaign, however, is the synergy that it creates between all of these different features. The whole, in this case, really is much greater than the sum of its parts. Without question, social media is a valuable way for brands to reach their intended audience, providing great opportunities for brand building, messaging and conversation marketing. Even the best luxury brands know the power of social media. Take, for example, the innovative ways in which Burberry has incorporated social media into their marketing efforts. And while the Apt CB2 campaign is a bit reminiscent of Burberry's best efforts, it takes social integration several steps further. The result is a brilliant combination of social media, marketing strategy, public relations and targeted advertising – all rolled up into one highly engaging package.

---

3 Simple Rules for Navigation That Will Boost Your Website's Performance

At the outset of every new website design project, I ask clients to list a few adjectives that would describe their ideal new site. Inevitably, “easy to use” is almost always at the top of the list. Naturally, no one wants their website to be difficult to use. After all, in today’s era of unlimited choice, a great user experience is an absolute necessity. You work too hard to attract visitors and prospects to your website only to drive them away because that site’s interface presents them with frustrations and challenges. In that vein, the ease with which visitors can navigate through your website and its content will have a significant impact on the success of your site. If users can’t quickly identify how to accomplish their goals – whether it’s obtaining more information or making a purchase – they are likely to make a quick exit, taking their business with them. It’s up to your site’s navigational structure to do the heavy lifting in supporting their objectives and answering their questions, guiding them through the site to find what they need and complete the actions appropriate to those needs. This could be purchasing an item, filling out a membership or information request form, or simply finding your phone number so they can call you and open the lines of communication with your business. Regardless of your site’s “win,” an intuitive navigation structure is what will lead them there, so make sure your website follows these three Cs of good navigation in order to ensure that you make the most of every opportunity to capture and convert new customers.

1. Be concise.

In his book The Laws of Simplicity, renowned designer and current President of the Rhode Island School of Design John Maeda offers the following advice as part of his First Law of Simplicity: “The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.” When weighing various options, the fewer choices that are available, the easier the decision process becomes. Give me four items to choose from, and I will be able to select one much more quickly than if you present me with eight. The same principle holds true for website navigation. Presenting your audience with fewer choices will allow them to more easily identify the one that pertains to their specific needs. Considering how impatient typical website visitors are, this can have a very positive impact on your site’s user experience. Look again at John Maeda’s quote, and you will notice that he is not an advocate for arbitrary editing but rather “thoughtful reduction.” Paring down the elements of your website’s primary navigation structure from nine or 10 choices down to four or five is great, but you need to be strategic in how you do it. Start by looking at the pages outlined in your sitemap and deciding how they can be categorized or grouped together in order to reduce the number of topline options. One of my favorite examples of this practice is the common testimonials page. Businesses love to include a testimonials page on their websites, but based on traffic numbers, these are typically among the least visited pages on any site. Traffic numbers are the ultimate arbiters of value and importance. If your visitors aren’t accessing certain content, then that content shouldn’t be given the same prominence as those pages that they actively seek out and use. In the case of testimonials, removing that link from your primary navigation and establishing it as a subpage under your “Our Company” or “About Us” section works very well. The same applies to any pages that you have that are dedicated to company history, management team profiles, staff bios, your company’s mission statement and the like. While these items are valid information for someone who’s really digging in to vet your qualifications, the majority of your visitors will never look at them, so let them take a back seat to the content that’s really going to seal the deal. Of course, this is where the “thoughtful reduction” principle comes into play. While each of the examples above could be grouped together, that doesn’t mean it is the right choice for your site. The goal is to examine your sitemap with a critical eye and decide which elements are truly important to your audience, which ones are secondary, and how you can treat them accordingly to provide as few choices as possible within your site’s primary navigation.

2. Be clear.

Everyone wants their website to be unique. Sometimes, this leads to the temptation to try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the organization and presentation of its navigational structure, whether that’s by replacing links with icons or coming up with clever names for major content areas. While this may sound like a great idea that will help set your site apart from your competitors’, it can easily backfire. Visitors want to make quick, logical choices as they navigate through your website, which means that the options presented to them need not only to be concise but also to be clear. The navigation on your website needs to conform to the expected conventions that your visitors instinctively know and recognize. This does not mean that your primary navigation should be designed to look like large, beveled buttons with faux‐3D effects. That treatment may make for an obvious “button,” but it is also not in keeping with the aesthetic of today’s Web. On the other hand, you don’t want buttons or links that are so subtle with so little contrast that they fade into the design to the point of becoming invisible. There is a happy medium to be achieved where all links can be obvious and attractive at the same time. Labels are also an important part of clear navigation. Having a navigation link labeled “About Our Company” directly conveys to users what they can expect to find on that page. Trying to be creative and instead name that link “Unlock the Magic” is anything but clear and will confuse and frustrate visitors who simply want to find more background information about your company. That’s not to say that exploring interesting and innovative avenues in the design of your website is always a bad thing. It can certainly help differentiate your site from others and make for a memorable experience. Just make sure that you are not sacrificing clarity for creativity and confusing the user experience in the process.

3. Be consistent.

The final rule of website navigation is consistency. If you’ve designed a clear, concise navigational structure that your visitors can quickly and easily understand and use, then it’s important to maintain that structure throughout the rest of your site. Your website is not a video game, where each level provides new challenges that are the purpose of the game itself. Your users do not wish to relearn how to use your site at every step along the way. They are there solely to obtain information or complete an action, and anything that gets in the way of their mission is reason enough for them to abandon your site. Consistency is about more than just your primary navigation, however. The way that submenus are presented on the interior pages of your site should remain the same from section to section as well, and the same holds true for treatment of text links or buttons. If you use a certain color for text links, consider using that same color for buttons. Users will quickly learn which color – red, for instance – denotes a clickable area, which will help them to continue moving through your site quickly and intuitively rather than being bogged down by simply trying to locate the pathways to their desired destination.

How does your site measure up?

While there are many factors that ultimately contribute to your website’s performance, a well‐designed navigational structure goes a long way toward ushering your visitors from point A (your home page) to point B (the point of conversion, whether that’s placing an order, sending you an email or picking up the phone to initiate conversation). Look at your site and evaluate its navigation based on the principles covered in this article.

1. Is there anything you can do to make your navigational structure more concise through thoughtful reduction?
2. Are there any changes you can make to make your navigation clearer to your audience?
3. Are you consistent throughout your entire site with the way navigation is designed and presented?

Even if you are not ready to undertake a major site overhaul, you can still refine and tweak your existing site to improve its navigation and realize the rewards of presenting a better user experience to visitors that have found your website and are looking to do business with you.

---