Pinterest And Crate And Barrel Offshoot CB2 Allow Users To Design Apartment In New York City
Pinterest, the popular social network for the graphically inclined, is teaming up with CB2, the home décor unit of Crate & Barrel, in a five day live event touted as “the first real apartment designed live on Pinterest.”
Pinterest is a social network based on the idea of “pinning” designs, gadgets, and other creative ideas to a digital corkboard, which users can share with the public. The site started in 2010 and has grown to over 70 million users with a whopping 30+ billion pins as of last week. The sites demographic is heavily female; 73 percent of users are women. It is also the number one social network to send users to CB2, which made it a natural choice for Mother New York, the advertising firm behind the campaign.
“The general concept,” Mark Aver, a creative director at Mother New York, said, “is this is the first time that an apartment is being designed through Pinterest in real time.”
APTCB2 is a collaborative effort. The currently empty apartment, located by Union Square in New York City, has four rooms and a rooftop, each which will be decorated by a different Pinterest designer and the voting public. Here’s how it works. The designers will present ideas, like different chairs or lamps, on their boards, pinning a few selections for followers to vote on by clicking the heart icon on the image. Then, when the item has been chosen, CB2 will move that piece into the room. Cameras set up in the apartment will take pictures as the process happens, and will allow viewers to watch a time lapse video of the event.
Voting will begin on May 7, and the first room to get a fresh look will be the dining room. South-African designer Ross Cassidy, the first person to bring in unique pieces into the apartment, has over 4.5 million followers on the social network. He states that his personal design style takes color very seriously. “I always build rooms with a strong color story,” Cassidy states on his bio. “Start with a signature color for the bulk of the room and then punch it up with bold accents in contrasting tones.”
The other designers include New York native Athena Calerone of Eye-Swoon, southern style writer Daniel Bear Hunley, interior designer and Sacramento Street blogger Caitlin Flemming, and designer and author Justina Blakeney.
CB2 opened its first store in 2000, and has grown to 14 stores in the United States and Canada. The offshoot company focuses on lofts and apartment design, and tends to be less expensive than the mother company Crate & Barrel. This campaign is the first major brand campaign for CB2. “This is our first advertising effort squarely focused on driving awareness of the overall CB2 brand and acquiring new customers,” Alicia Walters, Director of Marketing for CB2, told the New York Times recently.
By voting, “pinners” will be entered into a sweepstakes to win a room design worth up to $5000, which will be awarded in a CB2 gift card. Stores are located in seven states in the US including Washington DC, two territories in Canada, and one store in Singapore.
© Copyright IBTimes 2024. All rights reserved.