Pinned reference is a campaign-level reference asset flagged to appear in every Variation generated for that Campaign. Up to three per campaign. Lives in the Pinned sub-tab of the campaign References screen, promoted from the Discover or Inspiration sub-tabs via the pin or unpin action.
What gets pinned
References are images, product shots, brand assets, or example creative the Lead wants the rendering layer to consistently weight on every render. A skincare brand running a Valentine’s campaign might pin the product hero shot, the campaign-specific seasonal mood image, and the partner brand’s logo. Every Variation generated for that campaign reads those three pins as conditioning.
Why three is the cap
Pinning more than three references at once dilutes the conditioning. The rendering layer can hold a handful of strong references in the visual frame coherently; beyond that, the references compete and the output starts to look like a collage. Three is the practical ceiling where every pin still pulls weight.
Pinned reference vs Direction Anchor
The verb “pin” is overloaded in product UX, so the system uses distinct nouns to keep the two concepts apart:
- Pinned reference is campaign-scoped. It fires on every Variation in the campaign, regardless of Direction. Use it for hard requirements that don’t vary by creative angle (the product, the legal mark, the campaign-specific must-include image).
- Anchor is Direction-scoped. It is one Variation chosen to represent a Direction; it influences the cover and the re-roll seed for that Direction only. Use it for “this is the look for this Direction” decisions.
A campaign can carry both: pinned references that apply across the campaign, plus an Anchor inside each Direction that picks the representative render for that Direction.
Related on this site
- /glossary/campaign is the container the pin lives inside.
- /glossary/anchor is the related Direction-scoped concept.
- /glossary/variation is what the pinned reference conditions.