Pinterest Taps Ex-Amazon Exec as CMO to Fuel Commerce Ambitions

Pinterest is continuing its transformation into a full-scale shopping hub with the addition of two key executives. Amazon’s former global brand and marketing vice president, Claudine Cheever, will assume the role of CMO, while DoorDash and Spotify veteran Lee Brown will join as chief business officer, a newly created role.

The appointments come at a dynamic time for the 15-year-old social platform. When Bill Ready—who was PayPal’s COO before becoming commerce chief for Google—took over as CEO of Pinterest in 2022, he laid out the platform’s ecommerce ambitions.

“As someone who has spent most of my career in commerce and payments, it’s so clear to me that Pinterest has the opportunity to build something unique,” Ready said on LinkedIn at the time. “In the next phase of our journey, we will help people engage more deeply with all the inspiring products and services they find on our platform so they can build their best lives.”

In a post earlier today, Ready suggested that these two new hires will play key roles in those plans.

“Lee is a proven business leader with deep experience leading global sales and content teams at beloved consumer apps and publishers,” Ready wrote. “Claudine has spent the past decade leading marketing for the world’s largest online retailer.”

In her own LinkedIn post, Cheever expressed enthusiasm for joining Pinterest for its “next chapter” while also reinforcing the platform’s roots as “a place where people come to feel inspired, take action, and shop.”

Cheever replaces former CMO Andréa Mallard, who’d held the post for nearly seven years and has joined Microsoft AI as CMO.

Microsoft AI (MAI) has named Andréa Mallard as chief marketing officer (CMO). The exec, who left Pinterest in January after seven years, confirmed her new role in a LinkedIn post. […]

From inspiration to purchase

Pinterest debuted in 2010 as a digital cork board where users could collect images and videos (“pins”) of things that sparked their imaginations in areas like apparel, home decor, and travel. Its original business model was heavily dependent on advertising.

The social media platform awakened to the potential of online shopping via social media in 2015, when it introduced Buyable Pins. In 2017, its “Shop the Look” feature furnished its advertisers with click-to-purchase capabilities for items featured in pins.

In 2020, Pinterest proclaimed a “goal of making every pin shoppable.” Four new shopping enhancements appeared in 2022, including an API to empower advertisers with catalog management and product metadata features to support merchants on the platform.

While economic realities, including tariffs and tighter ad budgets, have spurred Pinterest to evolve, it’s not facing an existential crisis. The company posted a strong Q3 performance, including 17% year-over-year revenue gains, a 12% jump in monthly active users to 600 million, and an adjusted EBITDA of $306 million.

Even so, the social media platform got a late start to the ecommerce game; Twitter and Facebook introduced “Buy” buttons in 2014.

Merchants can make their Pins shoppable via product tagging.

And while Pinterest is incorporating AI to improve recommendation relevancy and ad engagement, that effort has been expensive; the platform’s 2023 R&D costs of $1.07 billion rose to $1.24 billion in 2024.

To further increase its visibility as a shopping destination, Pinterest recently inked a deal with Roku for Bring My Pinterest to Life, a streaming series featuring six 22-minute episodes in which influencers Caroline Vazzana, Tay BeepBoop Nakamoto, and Drew Michael Scott will lead guest consumers on an “inspiration to realization” shopping journey.