Page 45 - AdNews May-June 2020

Feature
ans
Ideas-sharing app Pinterest established a local team last year. Since then a lot has changed. We catch up with local boss Carin Lee- Skelton to see how it’s responded and what her team’s priorities have been.
The Pinterest Australia and New Zealand office hasn’t been open for a full year yet, but already the team is deep into its key focuses: making more relevant content for the market and improving the industry’s understanding of how to use the platform.
The Sydney-based team of more than 10 people was established in August last year and is headed up by Carin Lee-Skelton, who spent the past four years as a partner manager with the ideas-sharing app in the UK. Prior to that, she was at social media giant Facebook for six years.
She’s joined by Spotify’s former head of sales Cassandra Gilbert, who steps into the role of agency lead. Also on the team is Frank Masterton (ex-Buzzfeed), Kim Hollisand and Alex Gogh who all join as partner managers.
The local office, the third for the company in the Asia Pacific region, was opened after Pinterest had strong results with clients in the market, says Lee-Skelton.
“We’d already been working with partners such as Telstra, Kayla, Optus, Woolworths, Myer and some smaller brands such as Koala and Modibodi,” Lee- Skelton tells AdNews.
“We had already seen great success and great traction coming from the market, so we decided to put a team on the ground and continue to work with businesses such as brands, but also publishers and creators in the market.”
Other big names Pinterest has worked with include Apple, Revlon, Bonds and publisher News Corp.
Since being founded in 2010 in the US, Pinterest has grown to have more than 2000 staff across the globe and 335 million monthly active users. Seven million of those users are in Australia, according to Nielsen. The platform also boasts 200 billion Pins, or ideas, that have been saved on its platform across
WORDS BY
MARIAM CHEIK-HUSSEIN
www.adnews.com.au | May-June 2020 45
Creating better ideas for Australi