Introducing Pinterest Visual Search And An Alternative To QR

Last year, the QR code hit the 20-year mark. If you’re like me, then you experienced great excitement back in the early 2000's for the possible applications of the QR code in marketing. The Japanese marketing agencies in particular were adept at beautifully executing the inclusion of the QR code for multi-media experiences in ads or on buildings. While living in New York City, I witnessed a number of bus stop displays that incorporated some type of call to action using a QR code, but they never exhibited the ingenuity that my creative marketing heart desired. Today, 20 years later, many Americans remain unaware of the QR code's existence or its utility. 

QR codes offer a simple solution in bridging the offline world with the online world. When you scan a QR code, your smart phone returns a website landing page, a YouTube video, or a phone number for example. The key here is that you don’t have hit any keys — just scan and enjoy.

At the turn of the millennium, this service was instrumental in delivering a more robust digital experience, telling a story so to speak. The QR code presented an opportunity to immerse one’s audience in a fantasyland, filling the void where the human senses were deprived of taste, smell or feel. Many marketers rose to the challenge presenting new multi-channel visual experiences.

In one example from Ad Week (shown below), the free-press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders presented an image of a dictator with a QR code. Once the code was scanned, a video would play showing a mouth speaking. The user could then place the smart phone over the dictator’s mouth and watch him speak. The twist in the story was unveiled when the video played — it was a journalist talking on the subject of censorship not the dictator.

If you are unfamiliar with the QR code or the exciting uses thereof, here are some more nice examples of advanced creative design circa 2012.

Sadly, despite some great triumphs, the QR code has had many setbacks. First and foremost, the aesthetic of the code is unappealing and it looks pixilated. While the codes were often difficult to properly scan, I suspect the second reason is that reading the code required a software download for the smart phone, since Apple and Android didn't include the necessary scanning apps pre-loaded on their devices. The third reason is that it requires effort and patience on behalf of the user – open the app, scan the code, wait for a response from the server to see what happens. In the end, that's a lot of energy for a user to exert only to find that there is an advertisement at the end of the rainbow. This is especially true if the ad in question is not remarkable.

In 2011, I was still hopeful that the QR code would take as a major marketing tool. I even created one for a marketing email complete with an image that mirrored the content of the email creative. I later had a reality check and scrapped the QR code recognizing that the potential impact of maybe two conversions wasn't worth the real estate on the email. Fast forward to the end of 2015, and we see the development of the final nail in the coffin for the QR code: Pinterest Visual Search. 

As of November 9, 2015 Pinterest began rolling out a new visual search functionality for app and desktop. Simply Measured offers an insightful video demonstration of the Pinterest Visual Search functionality.

Pinterest’s new visual search function allows the user to highlight part of a pin’s image and then search that referenced portion of the image. The user can then select from the pins returned in the search. One may save a pin as a reminder to purchase later for example or click through to the website on the other side of the pin to learn more.

In today’s ever-expanding world of e-commerce, we are even farther removed from the softness of cashmere, the scent of a pumpkin spice candle or the taste of an artisanal chocolate. Marketing creative is now more important than ever in breaking through the enormous selection in the marketplace and in easily delivering the consumer to the digital checkout for a purchase. The human senses are very helpful triggers for memory; Without the opportunity to appeal to all of those senses, we need another way to help you recollect our amazing products or to at least make a note for later. 

If you have experience in business to consumer (B2C) product marketing, then you know that the average consumer will put very little effort into following your link or clicking on your ad. In my own A/B testing for one consumer-based product in particular, I found that users didn't respond well to the words “find” or “search” in buttons or CTAs. The words that did resonate with the audience in question indicated that there would be little or no effort exerted on the part of the user: “see” or “view”. Seeing and viewing are automatic since your eyes do all the work.

These are the very reasons why I hypothesize visual search to be a highly successful replacement to QR codes — visually appealing image to scan, no software to download, little effort on behalf of the user. Depending on your search practices, you may already be using visual search to identify public figures or entertainment professionals by using image recognition software. Facebook, for instance, uses this technology for photo tagging. Amazon released Firefly visual recognition last year for their tablet and there are additional integrations with other devices. 

In the case of Pinterest visual search, there is no download required — you must be logged into the application when you intend to visually search for a product or image. The visual search technology is also primed to be more widely adopted thanks to the publicity that it is receiving from Pinterest, a company valued at 11 billion with a massive user-base. Media coverage of this newly-adopted functionality is guaranteed to get some attention (or so this LinkedIn author hopes). More importantly, as I'll discuss later, the results of visual search can be more useful in a curated environment such as the one provided by Pinterest. 

As you may be aware, visual search is not a new technology. With respect to Pinterest visual search, this is a useful application of an existing technology in conjunction with a popular software. Google for example has offered reverse image search for some years now. TinEye will allow you take photos or upload images straight to the web browser from your mobile device with no app download required. In the example shown below, I used TinEye to lookup a (very cute) baby giraffe.

The results are numerous and don't easily point me to the photographer or even the whereabouts of the adorable giraffe in question. When I filtered for the “oldest” reference of the image, I found a PhotoBucket profile that did not belong to the photographer. Presumably this is the fault of the photographer for not embedding a copyright in the image, but even so, these returns indicate that this type of lookup will show the location of the image on the web, not necessarily the best source. This is a challenge to note when considering how this technology might be creatively applied to the marketing industry and how marketers will need to control the user experience at the top of the marketing funnel. Let’s turn to Pinterest’s example of how visual search might be used.

In April of 2013, writer Thorin Klosowski asked his readers to posit suggested uses for this type of image lookup and received some great suggestions that he’s shared on Lifehacker. In his article, he suggested that “[visual search is] useful if you frequent sites like Apartment Therapy that have unidentified furniture in shots of people's homes.”

On November 8, Pinterest announced a solution to this exact suggestion with their blog post titled “Our Crazy-New Fun Visual Search Tool.” The Pinterest blog post displays a demonstration of how the search feature works using a pin from Apartment Therapy. By using the visual search function, the user is able to search for a lamp pictured in the image, evaluate the search returns, and possibly purchase the lamp shown by clicking through to the retailer’s site from the selected pin. In this example, the lamp highlighted is the first of the returns shown below and is manufactured by Restoration Hardware.

Now, let’s take a look at Google’s image search to compare the results. I tested the Google reverse image lookup using the lampshade in question from the pin referenced above — first, just the image, and then next, with the image and semantic search terms using text referenced from the actual name of the lamp. The results did not exhibit the Restoration Hardware lamp or the necessary link to buy it.

Likewise, a general search query using the Pinterest search bar didn't reveal the lamp or where the consumer might purchase it.

 Pinterest, working with the VisualGraph technology acquired in 2014, offers an excellent use of the visual search tool for business to consumer (B2C) marketing. The visual search results are nicely contained in a curated environment and dependent on whether Pinterest has indexed the image. Of course, the impact that this technology has on sales is somewhat dependent on the manufacturer's involvement. Restoration Hardware proves a good test case for that. At this time, Restoration Hardware has a Pinterest profile but no pins — a major marketing fail. This would have been a great opportunity for Pinterest to partner with Restoration Hardware since the featured on-boarding example is in essence promoting their lamp. Fortunately for the home goods retailer, Pinterest pinners have been quite active in pinning to Pinterest from the Restoration Hardware digital catalog and those direct pins deliver users to the company’s official site.

 This scenario mentioned above is similar to what one might experience using the now-outdated QR code. Potentially, retailers can use the visual search by planting images (via SEO) on the web and by embedding both the copyright info as well as the desired destination tracking URL. (The technical aspects of this embedding procedure are outside the scope of this article). The desired landing page could prompt a purchase with a video embedded showcasing the product for example. At this time, as I've demonstrated, a cohesive campaign in a planned environment is advisable so that marketers can test the search results and properly target/funnel their desired audience.

While this search technology might inspire some great creative B2C marketing campaigns or contests using visual scavenger hunts of images, it could also be used in business to business (B2B) marketing for wholesale interior design digital look-books or for industrial real estate sales to cite a few examples. I did a quick search of Google and the Apple app store but was unable to locate a currently available “real estate visual search” app.

For less tangible products such as human resources SAAS software, marketers could use custom created images in ads that are recognized by all the visual search engines. If you are already using watermarks, simply add a hashtag to the watermark to better isolate the campaign in question. This would provide a platform for deeper interactive experiences for the user as well, similar to what one might have experienced with a QR code 10 years ago. The ad would simply prompt the user to use their favorite visual search tool or a selected partner's engine. Note that the image would need to be digitally referenced by the visual search engines, so don’t miss this step. Services such as TinEye index images and provide customized alerts for any instances of images posted to the web. 

We can expect to see the incorporation of more visual search engines in the near future pending the webosphere's response to Pinterest VisualGraph. Companies that specialize in image recognition search such as Deepomatic and Visual Engines are growing in number and offering marketers custom built tools for the ingenious ads of tomorrow. Facebook and it’s subsidiary Instagram are sure to follow suit with their own product marketing solutions. As for next steps, one might wonder when Pinterest influencers will have a chance to cash in on all the referral traffic that they provide to companies such as Restoration Hardware.

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Courtney Aura Freeman writes with the aim of sharing ideas and self-expression.