Athleta exec Andréa Mallard joins Pinterest as CMO

Andrea Mallard is
Pinterest’s new CMO.
Pinterest

• Pinterest has hired Andréa Mallard from Gap-owned
  Athleta as chief marketing officer.
• Mallard is joining Pinterest at an important time as
  the company is rumored to be planning an IPO soon and is
  fighting to prove its value to advertisers.
• Pinterest recently overhauled its self-serve Ads
  Manager tool, which makes up the bulk of revenue by allowing
  marketers to purchase and plan their own ads.

Pinterest is bringing in a retail exec to handle its top
marketing role as the company looks to beef up its advertising
business ahead of a potential IPO.

The company has tapped Andréa Mallard, Gap’s Athleta CMO, to be
its first CMO. She will oversee Pinterest’s marketing and
creative teams and report to chief operating officer Francoise
Brougher.

Mallard has held the CMO role at Athleta since March 2017, and
was previously CMO at digital health startup Omada Health for
four years. According to Pinterest, she will be responsible for
explaining the company’s platform to advertisers and partners.

Read more:
How Ben Silbermann came up with the idea of
Pinterest

“Her wealth of experience in building great brands will be an
asset to our company as we continue to expand globally,” Brougher
said in a statement. “She is exactly the right leader to help us
illustrate why hundreds of millions of people rely on Pinterest
to get inspiration and do what they love.”

Pinterest/Business Insider

Pinterest’s advertising ambitions are growing

Mallard is joining Pinterest at a time when the company is
rapidly trying to build out its revenue.

Pinterest recently
made the biggest update to its self-serve Ads Manager tool in
two years with new features that let advertisers set up and
target campaigns in three steps. The tool also lets marketers
track ad performance and optimize campaigns.

“It’s a hallelujah moment for us,” Nisho Cherison, senior
director of growth at ThirdLove, told Business Insider. “We no
longer need a third party helping us run ads on Pinterest, a team
of one person is now enough.”

Last week, the company
added a carousel ad format that lets marketers feature five
images within an ad. Facebook pioneered the carousel ad, and the
ad format is also used by Twitter, Google,
Instagram, and
LinkedIn.

The changes are part of of a bigger plan to scale Pinterest’s ad
business, which has been slower to grow than other platforms.

CNBC reports that the company is
preparing for a mid-2019 IPO and is on track to make $1
billion this year, up from $500 million in 2017. In September,
Pinterest announced that it had 250 million monthly users,

up from 200 million a year before.

Retail, fashion, consumer-packaged goods, and home improvement
advertisers are Pinterest’s biggest accounts, but the company has
worked to woo other categories of advertisers such as travel,
financial services, and automakers in the past couple of years.

“It was clear from my first conversation that this is a
purpose-led company with the heart, mind, and values needed to
become an iconic, global brand,” Mallard said in a statement.