For home decor retailers, the London Design Festival is their World Cup--and the goal is to draw interior design thought leaders and industry luminaries into their storefronts. We set out to make the Conran Shop a must-visit stop on the Design Festival circuit, build a relationship with design-loving millennials and generate PR buzz along the way.

The Conran Shop ethos is “considered curation”: they scour the world to find the most incredible articles of design, making the store equal parts retail experience and design museum. So it made sense to partner with Pinterest, a platform based on individual curation, tastes and with a passionate design community.

We decided to blur the boundaries between Conran’s physical world and Pinterest’s digital world, and in doing so, celebrate the creators and creative process that goes into making each product. So we created an installation that led consumers through physical pins and furniture, and enabled them to explore the very same products on Pinterest simply by tapping their phones.

On Pinterest, shoppers discovered the story behind each product and could save it to a shopping cart wishlist, creating an innovative, multi-faceted shopping experience.

Conran is a well-established brand but cater to an audience aged 45 years and older. They wanted to become more modern but stay true to their design heritage. Partnering with Pinterest--which reaches 1 in 2 millennials--was a great way to connect with younger and more contemporary audiences.

By creating an original media opportunity that blurred the boundaries between Conran’s physical world and Pinterest’s digital world the activation drove interest and visitors to the store during the London Design Festival.

PR tactics included: Emails to an existing customer database, Social channels: Facebook, instagram posts and stories, Promoted Ads and organic postings on Conrans Pinterest account. A full page listing in the London Design Festival program and LDF social channels and Press Outreach.

Beginning with a landmark window display in the flagship store in Chelsea, an immersive installation greeted customers inside the store with a winding pathway lined with 1,600 physical red Pins. Visitors were led into the store and encouraged to explore products tagged with a Pinterest Pincode, creating an innovative, multi-faceted shopping experience. A deeper story behind each product was revealed after scanning interactive Pincodes; including notes from the designers, ideas on how to stage their products and suggested product pairings. NFC tags (tiny stickers) were also placed next to every product, which allowed shoppers to scan and automatically add their favorite items (in the form of Pinterest Pins) to a bespoke ‘Conran Wishlist’ on their personal Pinterest board, just by simply tapping their smartphones.

We grew The Conran Shop’s reach on Pinterest over 7000%, from 17K to over 1.2M during the 7 week collaboration. 53% of this audience were millennials, which was their primary goal for this partnership.

In addition, the collaboration generated 15+ pieces of press coverage across B2B and consumer outlets. The partnership was covered in markets beyond the UK including Japan and Italy, and we reached 22M people across our social channels, with more than 150 mentions on Instagram from a combination of in-store visitors & influencers.