The Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery (RAMM) is Exeter’s award-winning home for culture, history, and world-class collections. But as we looked to encourage shoppers to their amazing curation of gifts in their shop/online, we had to look past Google Ads and traditional methods of brand awareness and revenue generation.
Gift Buying Trends
When the festive season arrives, Pinterest is one of the most engaging platforms for Christmas planning and gift shoppers. The one thing that makes Pinterest stand out from other social media platforms is the intent people use it with – with most searches containing the term ‘ideas’. It’s essentially an ideas generation platform when it comes to gift giving.
Recent data shows how intentional this behaviour has become. During peak seasons like Black Friday, Christmas and New Year, search for specific gift ideas dramatically increased. We learned from Retail Dive that “budget-friendly gifts for boyfriend” went up 2,600%, “traveller’s journals” increased by 610%, and “gift hamper for teachers” jumped 830%”. Pinterest uses these real search trends to create personalised holiday gift guides, helping users to easily discover different ideas and products that match the recipient’s personality.
Pinterest’s main audience for intentional gifts are among Gen Z. Almost 40% of Gen Z users say, Pinterest is one of the first places they start their shopping journey.
Example of Ads
In looking for the right kind of format for this campaign, we wanted to make sure we were able to stand out in a crowded Pinterest search page.
Carousel ads allow us to show multiple different gift ideas while also showcasing the RAMM brand alongside national brands like TK Maxx and Primark.
Why Pinterest for RAMM
November is the most competitive month for paid search, especially Black Friday and Winter Sales where large retail brands dominate shopping campaigns on Google with aggressive bids on high-volume keywords. Rather than try and compete with these national brands we decided the audience for RAMM is naturally more inclined to shop locally and ethically – which is exactly in line with the audience for Pinterest.
Showing up at the initial ‘awareness/research’ phase of the gift buying process has been integral for the success of the campaign, with an 85% increase in sessions as well as a 26% increase in overall revenue from the online shop. Users from Pinterest are spending over 2 minutes on the site on average – an indication of highly engaged users who want to know more.
Why Pinterest For You
For this campaign, we focused on reaching engaged shoppers who were in the gift giving mindset and being as specific as possible – the person who is buying a gift for their grandad will likely respond to an entirely different message than the person who is buying a gift for their partner and our strategy reflected that.
Pinterest is one of the best brand awareness tools you can utilise as you can show up before users start googling your competitors. By showing up when users are in-market for ideas and inspiration – you become the first option when they do start to google you.
It doesn’t just have to be gift giving either – we’ve recently partnered with a premium multi-fuel retailer/supplier to promote their brand on Pinterest to a highly targeted audience of those looking for tiny home modifications, or canal boat renovations.
It could also be a way of getting your amazing architectural projects out to an engaged audience looking for inspiration on their next multi-million pound development.
It’s clear as we head into 2026 that Pinterest isn’t just a platform where people scroll out of boredom – it’s where ideas are formed and big purchasing decisions are made.
