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A diverse world calls for inclusive and accessible experiences

About Pinterest

• Founded: 2010
• 2021 Revenue: $2.578B
• Employees: 3,225
• Monthly Active Users: 433 million
• Languages Supported: 38

It is no secret that tailored experiences help users feel comfortable and valued. And language plays a big part in that. When looking to the future, the international team at Pinterest is diving deep into what creates a psychologically safe, respectful, and welcoming space.

At Pinterest, our localization team is the bridge between global markets and the teams based in the United States where the company is headquartered. We are the bridge between the larger business needs and the requirements and our local market experts.

We collect data from all our markets to make sure that the message we are sending is fine-tuned in a way that resonates with all these audiences. With each new go-to-market strategy, we develop a business plan, outline, target, and a marketing plan along with the marketing and the PMM teams. Each product and market are different, so each go-to-market strategy needs to be thoroughly thought out and planned. Each market faces different challenges, so we need to find specific solutions.

The Universal versus the local

Although our content is localized, our core message is global, and we need to make sure that our message flows through our content universally. To do this we need to ask ourselves three questions:

1. What is the message?
2. What are we targeting?
3. Who is the audience?

Imagine launching an educational campaign for content creators on Pinterest. We know that content creators are different in each market, and we need to address them using a different voice using a different message. And so that’s exactly what we’re going to do. First, we need guidance from our local marketing managers. Second, we need to align with the company branding. And third, we need to adapt all these digital assets for the local market.

To have the right mix of global and local, we break things into two parts. There is a message that is universal, and there is a message that we can translate. In sheer localization terms, this means we can do translation and a review of that universal message. And then there is the local message that needs to be adapted and often copywritten from scratch to truly resonate with the audience.

Here’s how it works with the Pinterest Predicts report

With our very popular Pinterest Predicts report, by teaming up with the Insights Team, Marketing Team, and Brand, we made each asset absolutely local.

We changed not just the language — and sometimes the messaging if appropriate — but we changed the insides. We changed the editorial for each market, as well as the in-product links, and we added local data. The result is that our advertisers or business partners will see hyper-localized content for their market and should not notice that the content was originally drafted for the US market.

We translated the universal message and recreated a local message. It was a mix and match of something that resonated globally that was simply translated. Which was paired with local insights, local data, local markets, and local partners so these digital assets were, again, hyper-localized. But across all those markets, the leadership strategy was the same. And of course, the brand was the same.

Looking towards 2023

This strategy takes us into 2023 where we are doubling down on the universal message. What do we need to focus on as a company? What is a truth no matter where you are in the world?

Our first conclusion is the need for inclusion and belonging. The language we use needs to represent the diverse perspectives of our users. Not only in terms of language and locale but by a whole host of factors including gender, race, and different abilities. These truths need to flow through the universal message regardless of the local market.

But this is just one step. Another step is putting technology into use from the very beginning to flag sensitive content upstream. With such a large company and so much content being produced every day, it only makes sense to implement safeguards such as having every piece of writing scanned by a machine to pick out and flag anything that might be questionable for human review and approval.

But we can’t stop there. We have also increased our focus on educating translators, copywriters, and reviewers, to ensure that our content resonates with every user in the world whose abilities, culture, and experiences are different from ours.

Accessibility is the gatekeeper

No matter how impressive or clever the word choice, if it is not accessible, the content is literally meaningless. With this in mind, accessibility is the second piece of our approach for 2023.

For example, the concept of providing accessible event experiences was always a challenge. But now that many events have moved to the digital or hybrid sphere, potential audiences are much wider, and the language pair options potentially endless.

We have started exploring technology options to embrace this opportunity. We have already implemented speech-to-text and simultaneous interpretation services, including sign language and captioning in our events.

We delivered the 2021 “Pinterest Presents” in spoken English with locally closed captions and American Sign Language (ASL), as well as British, German, and French Sign Language. Created in collaboration with Sinéad Burke, the founder of Tilting the Lens, it was certified as a DICE-recommended event with the maximum score of 100%.

The challenges of adapting content are as real today as ever. But going into 2023, it is our responsibility to look beyond the historical focus of the localization field to truly embrace the progress of inclusion and accessibility for all.