Just a few days ago, the Skittles home page took on its Wiki appearance to give consumers more control. Agency.com has now transformed Skittles.com into a Twitter feed displaying every reference to "Skittles" anyone tweets.
- Skittles.com Becomes Social Marketing Experiment:
Will It Be Effective? - Skittles Twitter Page Image:
Skittles.com Becomes a Twitter Feed - Skittles Facebook Page Image:
Skittles.com Changes Into Facebook Page - Skittles Wiki:
Site Turned Into Wiki
Read More About the Skittles Social Marketing Venture:
Start the countdown to see how long it takes before Mars brand execs see the dribble being splattered onto Skittles.com and recognize this free approach to social marketing can be disastrous. Just letting consumers type whatever they want about anything as long as the word "Skittles" is included leaves you open to an anything goes public.
And that's just what's happened. People are using the feed to promote their own companies, write words you wouldn't dare say in front of your mother and say how much they hate the candy.
Images of the home page are available in the bulleted list below. Offensive words have been blurred.
As long as the word "Skittles" appears anywhere within the 140 character limit on Twitter, it's automatically posted on the Skittles home page. No substance to the comments. No happy sunshine feedback about the product. Mostly useless, even offensive, one-liners that are in no way related to the candy brand.
If you're thinking about entering the world of social marketing to help promote your product or service, be sure you understand how it works before you take the plunge.
Update: As predicted, the Skittles Twitter experiment didn't last long. A few hours after this post was originally published, Skittles changed its home page again. This time, it's taken on its Facebook page appearance. If the Skittles page returns to a Twitter feed, setting up filters might just be a good idea. We are talking about a company's reputation and public image, after all.
Talk About This Story: Twitter users tweeted thousands of references to Skittles, some just to see their user name show up on Skittles.com. Even with the negative comments, this social marketing experiment has created a lot of buzz. Do you think this venture has been a success for Skittles?
Why, why, why did they leave it up there completely uncensored for so long? I don’t get it. I went through pages of their search yesterday before I found even one fairly decent comment. Even that said something about Skittles not sucking as much as M&Ms if you can call that a decent comment.
Why would they be aiming at the Twitter and Facebook crowds when this is not their target demo? Sure, it’s a cheap way to get hype but if it’s not reaching your target audience, what’s the point?