New Pinterest Consumer Trends & Creative Covid Ideas

Coming up with fresh content marketing ideas and campaigns is difficult at the best of times.

Week after week, post after post, things can get a bit samey. 

Throw in the ol’ COVID curveball, and it gets harder still.

To help inject some much-needed freshness into idea generation, Pinterest has published its newest quarterly trends report, providing food for thoughts across a range of verticals and audience groups.

Pinterest’s latest report showed that they’re seeing massive spikes in searches that would never have been so prevalent at the turn of the year, never mind 12 months ago.

What we’re finding value in as the world battles pandemics, fires and oppression has changed the landscape dramatically, and we can see that through the main consumer trends heading into the final part of 2020.

People are focusing on themselves, on what they can control, and improving the environment around them. Placed in a context of isolation, lockdown and COVID anxiety, that’s a perfectly reasonable reaction to the extremes of the world outside.

“People on Pinterest are making the transition back to life with an extra emphasis on turning inwards, both physically and mentally, in order to focus on the areas where they have the most control.”

This won’t come as much surprise, but how males, females and parents turn inwards and focus on the areas in which they have control differ. Different generations have different methods of doing so, as well.

Gen Zs are searching for:

• Mental health check-in (up 500%)
• Zen bedroom ideas (up 500%)
• Calming bedroom (up 300%)
• Mindful eating (up 44%)

Millennials parents are searching for:

• Schedule for children at home (up 2,000%)
• Mental health activities for children (up 350%)
• Carnival games for children (up 300%)
• Children’s workout routine (up 88%)

Men are searching for:

• Workout routine for me (up 350%)
• Home improvement projects (up 78%)
• Art therapy projects (up 65%)

Pinterest currently has over 400,000 million monthly active users (MAU), while Gen Z, Millennial and Men are driving growth on the platform. Despite the gains in their male audience, women still make up around 60% of their global audience.

Be Good

The overall message from Pinterest is one of positivity. They see search trends encompass these themes more than ever.

We’re seeing such a large section of society plump for broadly similar searches, which means that there’s a unique opportunity to appeal to a range of people with some consistent messaging.

People want to use Pinterest to inspire themselves, discover new ideas and escape the polarised world outside. They don’t enjoy toxicity on social media, and they don’t want content that could cause anxiety.

They, now more than ever, they need a route to feeling better about themselves, and life more broadly.

Back To The Future – What Was Trending In Q3?

These search trends are broadly consistent from what we saw back in July. Not much as changed since then and the one thing we were all certain about is that global uncertainty would continue.

That’s reflected in the search data. Meditation, gratitude and positivity saw huge jumps in the number of times they were searched.

Searches for health and wellbeing were also on the up as more people turned towards Pinterest to find help with stress relief activities, finding a productive morning routine or keeping their children occupied.

As we saw in their latest release, searches that relate to DIY and home improvements remained strong through July, August and September.

Same Same In Q2

If we look back even further in Q2, this theme of certain uncertainty remained. As Zoom and video conferencing took off, so did searches relating to virtual socialising.

Searches for virtual sleepover ideas went up nearly 800%, while virtual children’s birthday party increased 2,600%. The themes of DIY and renovation remained strong as people searched for project inspiration and sought to de-clutter working from home areas.

Trends

With low hopes of an end to COVID-19 fears and uncertainties, there’s no reason to believe that any of the trends highlighted in Q2, Q3 through the latest report will change any time soon.

People want positive messaging, and they want to take control of the aspects they can manage. Life has changed since January but having ownership of space is still important, and that’s reflected in the latest trend.

Our homes now have to be our place of release as well, and it doesn’t appear as if that’s going away any time soon.