Pinterest CMO Andréa Mallard: ‘Great brands have a perspective on how the world ought to be’

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Pinterest is having a huge year, with its stock jumping almost 125%, its active monthly users hitting 400 million and advertisers rushing to align their messages with its apolitical, aspirational images. Now the question is: Can it build off this momentum and become an Instagram or TikTok-sized Big Deal?

To get there, the company needs to sell the world on the fact that it’s more than a bulletin board for one-off occasions and milestone moments like weddings, baby showers and home renovations. Success means getting people to see Pinterest as a must visit, home screen-worthy app that allows you to organize the world through pictures and inspiration. The challenge of spreading that message falls to the company's first CMO, Andrea Mallard.

The platform says -- and has earned the right to say -- that it’s a source for much more than a millennial woman's life cycle changes. Parents look to it for inspiration for preschool math worksheets in a COVID world, Gen Zers search topics like gender equality. And that’s not just women -- the platform says the number of men has jumped nearly 50% year-over-year. 

So that’s where the marketer comes in to tell a story. And Mallard is passionate about the importance of that role today. “Marketing has become so much more than crafting an ad. Brand, done right, is the connective tissue of an organization,” she says. 

Pinterest pitches itself as the positive corner of the internet, and in an increasingly polarized world, positivity is a plus, especially in the minds of advertisers and consumers fleeing news. But even Pinterest has confronted controversy, with allegations of a toxic culture, discrimination and unfair pay.

Prior to joining Pinterest in 2018, Mallard held the CMO role at women’s apparel brand Athleta and the digital health startup Omada Health. She spent seven years at the global design firm Ideo working with brands such as Johnson & Johnson and Ford. Her depth of product experience is a more unique background than a traditional marketer climbing the corporate ranks -- something that comes in handy as a storyteller: “We will never have a better brand experience than our product experience,” she says. Below she shares more of her story.

1. What has had the most impact on your perspective as a marketer?

The realization that companies can have as much influence over public opinions as traditional political parties has changed the level of thoughtfulness, responsibility, and bravery required of the modern CMO. Great brands have a perspective on how the world ought to be, but identifying the substance, tenor, and boundaries of that perspective is deep, demanding work.

2. What’s changed the most about your job as a marketer over the course of your career?

Marketing has become so much more than crafting an ad. Brand, done right, is the connective tissue of an organization. Great marketers must therefore be literate about and build empathy for most functional areas of a given company. For instance, that means having a perspective on how the product needs to evolve, how policies need to be updated, or whether the business model might need to be disrupted. But we can’t form nuanced opinions without understanding the pressures and realities of those roles, so we have to build as much empathy for our colleagues as for our consumers. The truth is that we earn the right to tell our story when our story is worth telling. So, my job is to understand all the levers we can pull to ensure our story is a better one to tell, year over year.

3. What’s the hardest part of a marketer’s job today?

Hitting short term growth goals while protecting the long-term viability of the business. Philosophically, these shouldn’t be in conflict, but pragmatically speaking, they can sometimes feel that way. My strategy is to have enough robust in-quarter wins to keep growth and sentiment healthy without sacrificing attention on the longer-term bets or stamina needed to build an iconic brand that lasts. That means consciously forfeiting some potential short-term revenue in order to keep enough bandwidth and workstreams focused on the (much) bigger picture.

4. Tell us about the marketing campaign you’re most proud of working on in your career.

I hope to answer this in a year’s time and point back to Pinterest — our planned 2020 brand campaign had to be postponed due to COVID, but we are gearing up for an incredible 2021. That said, I’m proud of all the brand and product campaigns I led while CMO of Athleta (and we produced them all at a very steady clip, on a very small budget, and with killer business results—every time). Two come immediately to mind. “Up For Anything” was the first campaign where I convinced the team to break the mold of our more polished approach and have, well, a bit more fun. We asked a handful of real customers to participate in a focus group that ended up pushing the boundaries of what is reasonable to expect from a focus group (spoiler alert: it included trapeze and jumping off a crane that was several stories high). We followed it up a couple months later with a campaign called “Suit Up” that included some breakthrough experiential elements, including an underwater fashion show of water sport athletes held at Heidi Klum’s old (and unbelievably stunning) NYC apartment. All Athleta campaigns shared a common thread, which is celebrating the power that can be unleashed in all women through honoring, moving, and loving one’s body—exactly as it is.

5. What’s a marketing campaign you wish you’d thought of and why?

Most recently, it was a campaign done by Miami Ad School students Seine Kongruangkit and Matithorn Prachuabmoh Chaimoungkalo to promote social distancing amid the COVID-19 crisis. During the height of the lockdown in Europe, anyone chancing a walk outside would be met with billboards containing major spoilers from their favorite Netflix shows. It wasn’t even a real campaign, but it should’ve been. I’d hire either of them in a heartbeat.

6. What’s your must read, watch or listen for all marketers?

I recommend Unleashed, by Dr. Frances Frei and Anne Morris. You need to be the CEO of a complex marketing organization as much as you need to be the CMO of the actual company. So being able to get the most out of the talent and passion of your team is job one. This book opened my eyes to the true characteristics of 21st century leadership, and the importance of building a team and culture that continues to excel even after you leave it.

7. What’s an under the radar brand you’re watching and why?

I’ve been quietly watching and rooting for Perfect Day for some time now. Much like Impossible Foods, another company I love, they’re on a mission to convince the world to give up animal-based proteins; in their case, dairy. The potential positive environmental and health impact of convincing even a small proportion of the globe to eschew dairy could be transformative. I’m waiting to see them breakthrough in a bigger way in the coming years — it’s an idea whose moment has come. And, speaking personally, I’m dying to see them launch an unapologetic antidote to the ubiquitous and, I would argue, very tired “Got Milk” campaign of the past three decades.

8. Name a product you can’t live without (that doesn’t connect you to the internet) and tell us why.

A few years ago, I bought a Flow Hive. It’s a beehive that you tap like a keg when you want to harvest honey, without disturbing or directly handling bees, making it a far easier and less terrifying set up for your average backyard beekeeper. It may sound funny to suggest I cannot live without, you know, a beehive, but I tend to go into my backyard at least once a day (especially during work from home) to just sit in total calm and watch the bees work. I never tire of it. It gives me an instant reminder of the complexity and elegance of the natural world that we rarely get these days staring down Zoom call after Zoom call. It has become a much needed meditation, even for just a few minutes, that I actively use to calm my mind at the end of every day.

9. Finish this sentence. If I weren’t a marketer, I would be…

An OBGYN or college professor. 

10. Finish this sentence: The marketer I most want to see do this questionnaire is…

Dara Treseder, who just joined Peloton to lead their global marketing and communications.

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