After eight years leading marketing, Andréa Mallard is leaving Pinterest. The marketer joined the social media platform in 2018 as its first chief marketing officer.
Mallard joined Pinterest in 2018 as its first CMO and later took on responsibility for product design, communications and youth safety. Under CEO Bill Ready, she was closely involved in repositioning Pinterest’s product philosophy and marketing narrative as the company swayed away from engagement-driven recommendation models. Ready publicly rejected competing to become “the fourth or fifth TikTok," and re-engineered Pinterest’s AI to push against inflammatory, negative or triggering news content down the feed and give way to wellness, self-improvement and positive inspiration as core parts of the platform experience.
“Initially, the street reacted badly and our stock dropped about 20%. As a leadership team, we looked at each other and said: It’s worth it. If that’s what the outcome is, it’s absolutely worth it because we believe in the long run this is the right thing for the business and, more importantly, the right thing for our users,” Mallard said in a last-quarter interview with Campaign Asia-Pacific.
“We started to train our algorithm increasingly on what people are saving, not just what they’re looking at… very quickly people were saving things they want to bake next week, or what they want their dream house to look like… and we were getting this virtuous cycle where the good was being escalated to you, not just the inflammatory.”
Users recognised the AI-positivity, and what followed was nine consecutive quarters of user growth, a return to operating profit, stronger adoption among Gen Z—Pinterest’s fastest-growing audience.
Asked how Pinterest balances its wellbeing mission with the realities of an ad-driven business, Mallard said the platform’s commercial performance had strengthened as its product shifted toward intentional, “time well spent” behaviour.
“We have tuned our AI for inspiration and wellbeing and not outrage, and we have built a business where people genuinely want to shop,” she told Campaign Asia-Pacific. “Our algorithm focuses on time well spent, rewarding meaningful actions like pins saved and ideas explored, rather than just endless scrolling. As a result, Pinterest is ranked the #1 social media platform for instilling feelings of self-worth and purpose, according to a global wellbeing metric… we’ve proven that AI can drive both performance and positivity at the same time.”
Ads in positive environments drive stronger outcomes, with people up to 20% more emotionally engaged and purchase intent increasing on platforms they perceive more positively, as per media intelligence firm MAGNA.
Before joining Pinterest, Mallard held senior roles at Athleta and Omada Health.
Asked what defines strong marketing leadership, Mallard said: “Great CMOs are not myth makers, they’re truth tellers… There can’t be any daylight between the product we’re building and the story we tell the world.”
During her time at the company, Pinterest expanded its cultural and brand partnerships, including its arena collaboration with WNBA champions the New York Liberty, and broadened its user base to include more male users, many of them Gen Z.
Mallard has been named multiple times to Campaign US' CMO 50 list.
Pinterest has offices in Singapore and Japan, and is monetised in select Asia-Pacific markets.
The company did not comment on Mallard’s next role.
