I’m sure you’ve heard about what Skittles have been doing lately. If you visited the site a few days ago you would have seen the skittles.com homepage redirect to the twitter search page showing all of the conversations on twitter that mentioned “skittles.” There has been a lot of commentary about what skittles has been doing and not everyone agrees. So far twitter has redirected the homepage to twitter, facebook, and now is now point to the skittles wikipedia page.
Personally I like what skittles is doing. They are introducing the world their social media presence and it’s great. Those people who are not familiar with tools like twitter will quickly understand what is going on. It’s a unique and dynamic experiment and it’s great to see a brand like skittles experimenting with their marketing efforts. I scanned the wikipedia skittles page and I definitely learned a lot about that delicious little candy including more about their recent marketing efforts.
According to the wiki page:
On Tuesday, March 3, 2009, Skittles launched a bold new web-based marketing campaign that replaced their website with a real-time Twitter feed[1]. For a little more than 24 hours, any post on Twitter that included the word “skittles” was aggregated and displayed on the Skittles homepage. Widely reported on, many praised Skittles for their innovative use of social media, while others criticized Skittles’ decision to allow comments to appear uncensored. Throughout the short-lived campaign, there were sporadic reports of inappropriate language, including racial slurs. Many marketers also debated the wisdom of employing Twitter, which is known to have a much older demographic[2], given that the candy maker typically targets a younger consumer[3]. On Wednesday, March 4, 2009, Skittles ended the Twitter component of the campaign and linked instead to its Facebook fan page. Some watchers suggested that Skittles had redirected its site to Facebook as a result of the inappropriate language appearing on Twitter[4], while others argued it demonstrated masterful media management by radically changing the story at the height of public attention[5]. By the end of the first day of Skittles’ Facebook strategy, more than 500,000 Facebook users had joined its fan page.
If you ask me, I think we need to see more brands getting out there and experimenting with their marketing efforts.
what do you think about the skittles marketing strategy?
I think it's a great experiment, but I wouldn't have approved it if I were marketing manager at Skittles.
1. It's too limited… unless they start to use every social media application out there, maybe they can stretch it for 2 – 3 months. And that's using every application, even the ones that don't make sense.
2. Most of these things are still ( I don't like it either) early adopter, while Skittles is mainstream. People get forced into something without proper explanation how to join, what to do or any other reason. What is this Twitter thing, how can I get it?
3. I just don't see the added value. I can understand that referring to a wiki page gives visitors the possibility to learn something about Skittles, but why not keep it at that? A referral, not make it your homepage.
I don't see any added value, don't see any seeds for an online community and I frankly don't see a clear and direct link with the brand. It seems like a nice experiment, and I really hope they do it because they want to research some stuff, because if they don't, it seems useless.
Just my 2cts
hey tom, always great to hear from you.
you definitely make some good points about some of the platforms being early adopter, however I think skittles is doing a good job of introducing people to their online presence . i think it's hard to quantify the exact value, especially since i dont know what the site looked like before all of this happened. i'd be curious to see their stats. skittles did mention that they received 500,000 facebook fans though, that's huge!
Hey, if it's research, than I'm all for it. If this is the result of research, I have some serious doubts…
We'll see how it turns out right?
hey tom, always great to hear from you.
you definitely make some good points about some of the platforms being early adopter, however I think skittles is doing a good job of introducing people to their online presence . i think it's hard to quantify the exact value, especially since i dont know what the site looked like before all of this happened. i'd be curious to see their stats. skittles did mention that they received 500,000 facebook fans though, that's huge!
Hey, if it's research, than I'm all for it. If this is the result of research, I have some serious doubts…
We'll see how it turns out right?
Do you have the rank for skittles facebook in 2009?