Picnic with Waitrose on Pinterest’s interactive ad format

Pinterest is hosting Waitrose’s latest picnic campaign and its colourful variety in food choices for this year’s summer dishes.

Raising awareness of its high-quality products and everyday food range, the supermarket brand is setting out to inspire Pinners (Pinterest users) to prepare meals using Waitrose ingredients, using Pinterest’s interactive ad format, the Pin Extension, also recently used by retail bank Halifax.

Pinterest’s Pin extensions are an immersive experience that lets Pinners deep dive and interact with a brand’s content and drive stronger engagement from inspiration to action. Through the Pin Extension, Pinners will be directed through one of Waitrose’s promoted Pins to a microsite created exclusively by Pinterest.

Bela Mashru, Head of Grocery at Pinterest UK said: “This year, we’ve seen a particular spike in searches relating to summer food and drinks as the warmer weather has presented people with the opportunity to share meals with friends and family.”

Food and drink is one of the most popular categories on Pinterest. Millions of Pinners head to the platform every month to search and save recipe inspiration, currently for fuss-free food, with searches rising for ‘Outdoor Summer BBQ’  (9x YOY), ‘BBQ party food’ (16x YOY), ‘Picnic inspiration’ (8x YOY) and ‘Best picnic food ideas’ (5x YOY).

Waitrose’s new campaign features an interactive ‘look book’ allowing Pinners to select from one of four different summer food options including dishes from around the world. They will then be shown a selection of summer dishes and recipes, including tips and tricks on how to perfect each one, with a shopping list specifically for that recipe that the user can have to hand ahead of their next grocery shop.

Sarah Hood, Social Marketing Lead at Waitrose said: “With people on the platform browsing for easy and fresh summer ingredients and dishes, our Waitrose Ideas Book will help them to discover fun and exciting recipes and products, perfect for hosting their back garden gathering or sunny park picnic.”