Don’t Don’t Yourself: Behind Pinterest’s Push for Us to Face Fear and Enjoy a Creative Life
Most social media platforms are designed to trap us in never-ending doomscrolling and tedious arguments – but Pinterest has an altogether different aim. It wants to inspire us to take action, to try new things and enrich our lives. And its new campaign tackles the thing that so often gets in the way of us following our creativity and curiosity: our inner saboteurs. Our fears, anxieties, self-doubt, procrastination – those tiny, niggling voices that can become impassable, looming obstacles.
A series of colourful and witty ads, directed by Kim Gehrig, and a suite of poppy, neon outdoor posters urge people ‘Don’t Don’t Yourself’ in the US, UK and Germany. Louise Richardson, marketing director, Europe, at Pinterest and Uncommon creative director Christopher Keatinge chat to LBB’s Laura Swinton about the brand ambition and creative inspiration behind the campaign.
LBB> Pinterest's philosophy and USP for brands and users is very different to the other social media platforms, focused on trying to inspire 'action'. Can you tell us a bit about that philosophy, and how it has shaped the strategy and thinking behind the campaign?
Louise> At Pinterest, we’re definitely more excited about giving people the inspiration to actually get offline and experience life, than we are about the passivity of social media platforms. So many online spaces feed the saboteurs – our inner critic, fear of failure, judgement or procrastination – that stop us from creating, from trying new things. And we’re spending more waking hours online than ever before, amplifying the effect this has on our wellbeing in real life. So our philosophy has always been that we have a responsibility to our users to build a more inspired internet – one that enriches real life, instead of sabotaging it. That Pinterest is different from other platforms – that we’re here to silence your saboteurs, not amplify them – was the starting point for the whole campaign.
LBB> From a business and brand perspective what specifically did you want to achieve with this campaign? Are there any particular metrics or perceptions you're hoping to change? What will success look like?
Louise> We were clear from the beginning that we wanted to draw a line in the sand between Pinterest and other online platforms. People can choose where to spend their time online, and we offer an alternative to the toxicity found elsewhere on the internet: time spent on Pinterest is time you’re investing in you. Success to us is awareness that there is an antidote to the negativity, and an understanding that Pinterest plays a positive role in our Pinners’ lives.
LBB> I can't help seeing the focus on helping people get past their fears and anxieties, and finding joy in small moments is particularly relevant right now given the anxiety-inducing economic uncertainty many parts of the world are facing. I'm curious about if and how that context factored into the strategic conversations you had?
Christopher> Truthfully, the idea came from a more personal place to begin with. Really, it boiled down to: what are the things that stop us from making as creative people? What are the voices we wrestle with, every time we sit down to try something new or have an idea? Yes, the world is an anxious place right now, but I think people have always approached their creative endeavours with a degree of anxiousness, particularly as they become older.
LBB> What was the idea that really 'unlocked' this campaign for you?
Christopher> Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic, talks about fear, and how fear holds us back from living and enjoying a creative life. Inspired by this, we wrote a spot in which fear was personified as a Christopher Walken like character, monologuing like a grandiose villain before being defeated by the act of making a cheesecake. He was our original saboteur and the starting point for the campaign.
Immediately, we realised that the more specific our saboteurs got, the funnier and more truthful the campaign became, so Fear of Failure, the Inner Critic, and Procrastination swiftly followed. But there are many more saboteurs that didn’t make it to the final five – characters like The Patriarchy, Maternal Guilt and Self-Censorship – that we’d love to bring to life one day, but who for now remain the subjects of our long copy fly posters.
LBB> Though the campaign deals with some big topics, like self criticism, fear of failure, the impact of doomscrolling, it's witty and strikes an engaging, self-aware tone - how did you go about figuring the right tone to strike?
Christopher> We definitely didn’t set out to make a mental health campaign. It is, however, an idea that holds up a megaphone to our internal voices and so I can see why it might feel that way. For us, it was all about striking a balance – what feels truthful and potent, but also funny and optimistic?
LBB> Pinterest is a great platform for inspiration and discovery so I'm curious - did you use Pinterest for inspiration during the development of the overall look and art direction?
Christopher> Pinterest is brilliant because it is able to shine a light on upcoming trends and ideas. We worked hard to make sure that the things we see people trying in the ad – making a tuna tower, dressing in head-to-toe fluro – came from what we know people are using the platform for. It’s these little details that make the whole thing feel more vivid and creative.
LBB> Pinterest as a platform tends to skew female but that men and boys are a rapidly growing demographic and I think the campaign does a great job of speaking to a variety of men and engaging with concerns. So how did you think about how you wanted to speak to men in particular?
Louise> Historically, you think Pinner, you think female. It’s a different story when it comes to gen z, our fast-growing audience, which is obviously more diverse in terms of gender identity and more evenly split between male and female. The truth is, we didn’t set out to explicitly speak to men; in fact, the heroes of each of our films were genderless until fairly deep into script development. Above all, we wanted these characters to be truthful -0 and the truth is, boys can be beauty creators! And because Pinterest is a positive online space, they can do so without fear of the judgement they’ll find on other platforms.
LBB> From a creative perspective, why was this in-camera and one-shot approach to the films so important? Why was Kim Gehrig the right director for this project and what did she bring to it?
Christopher> Along with the many brilliant ideas she brought to the table, the one-take nature of the films is entirely Kim’s. It was one of the standout elements of her treatment that made it such an easy sell, and the clarity of her vision was why she was exactly the right director for the job.
The one take construct of the films forced us to refine the scripts and the beats of the action, because it is incredibly unforgiving as a technique. Microseconds of performance really do make things entirely usable or unusable. But when it works, it’s magic.
LBB> As well as the film, I see there's a big outdoor push which feels very interesting given the brand's desire to get us more engaged with the world around us! So can you tell me about why outdoor is important and what we might see from some of the big takeovers in the UK, US and Germany?
Louise> Pinterest is really about putting down your phone and experiencing things in your offline life, and so outdoor was always key to reaching our audience – as they go about doing exactly that. We thought carefully about the context of each of our locations across the US, UK and Germany: what saboteur might strike in this moment, at this location? What trending idea on Pinterest might stop someone don’t-ing themselves in this exact place, leading them to try something new for dinner that night, or say yes, I can pull off this colour blocking look. And as Christopher said, OOH also gave us the opportunity to meet some of our other saboteurs in our long form copy fly posters (Patriarchy is one of my faves!).
LBB> The line 'Don't Don't Yourself' feels like it has a lot of potential - how has that line unlocked other ideas and thinking within the marketing team (as well as the broader team) at Pinterest?
Louise> We are having so much fun with this line! We hope it helps people realise how often in life we don’t actually go through with something for fear of failure, judgement or just plain procrastination. The idea that you can overcome your don’ts by doing - it’s empowering, it sets us up in opposition to passivity and inspires positive action, which is at the heart of everything we do at Pinterest.
