What’s the Interest in Pinterest: Leveraging Pinterest for Qualitative Market Research Through Secret Boards

Pinterest is a social network firmly rooted in collecting and sharing image-based content, like photographs, illustrations and videos. Users have turned to Pinterest for an assortment of reasons: from planning a project to organizing an event to curating inspiration boards. In 2012, Pinterest unveiled a new feature – Secret Boards. Secret Boards can be applied in a multitude of ways and can aid in the execution of qualitative research.

 

First, there are some key things you should know about Secret Boards:

• Each account can have up to 3 Secret Boards.

• If invited to pin on another’s Secret Board, it doesn’t count as one of your 3 Secret Boards.

• You can’t change a board back to secret after you’ve made it visible to everyone.

• You can’t make already public boards secret.

• Secret Boards are totally secret -- only visible to you and those you invite to view or collaboratively pin.

• Secret Boards are at the bottom of your Pinterest page.

 

Secret Boards give the qualitative researcher confidence that proprietary information is not seen by all on Pinterest, just you, the respondent and whomever else you share the board with.  

 

Projective exercises are the most likely way to use Pinterest for custom/primary research.  Some ways to consider using Secret Boards would be to:

 

• Pin images that reflect a respondent’s feelings about a concept.

• Create an ideal environment/product/service using an assortment of pins to reflect the respondent’s ideas compiled on one board.

• Define a brand’s image and what the brand represents.

• Help respondents articulate ethereal attributes that are otherwise difficult to express, which helps brand groups and copy writers develop language and concepts, e.g., freshness, soft, healthy, new, anything related to taste or flavors (salty, sweet, rich, etc.).  

• Collage exercises similar to paper collage, only using images from Pinterest.

• Respondents reveal something about themselves by using pins to represent the attributes, e.g. values, interests, idols, fears, frustrations.

 

It’s important to instruct respondents to comment fully in the comment box about why and how that pin was used to address that specific question. Comments can be revealing of the rationale for choosing the image and this is where the language is uncovered. When analyzing the results, look for commonality between what respondents pinned.

 

Try an exercise with some friends, like I did.  Two QRCA colleagues and I each made our own Secret Board and invited each other to view ours. Our topic was “He could put his shoes under my bed anytime, well, if I weren’t married!”  We learned that, though we all are in a different decade in age, there are some men we all thought would fit the bill, so to speak.  We also saw the power of Pinterest through the comments posted (which you don’t see here because, well, they’re secret!).  Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, pictured in the first board here raised our curiosity because he’s not been nominated for People Magazine’s Sexist Man Alive issue, ever.  Through probing in the comments, we learned that “power” was seductive and captivating to one respondent; it just wasn’t about looks or physique.  This revealed an interesting element about our respondent and what she values.