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Skittles Social Media Campaign Increases Traffic 1332% in One Day

posted on March 9, 2009


Say what you want about the Skittles experiment with social media, the campaign was effective in increasing the rainbow candy’s web site presence.

Hitwise reports a 1332% increase in web visitors on March 3rd.

Alexa–put the rotten tomatoes away–confirms this jump in traffic:

alexa-skittles

And Google Trends saw a spike in the number of people searching for “skittles.”


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  • Andrey Milyan

    With so much buzz in the online marketing blogosphere this is not at all surprising. There is no doubt Skittles got us talking about its campaign and visiting their site, no doubt contributing to the traffic spike. Did they reach the right audience though?

  • http://www.rouletteonlinegames.org RouletteOnlineGames

    wow, big numbers

  • http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

    @Andrey – isn’t that the big question with any big numbers from social media? I can’t ever say that the homepage of Digg helps me reach the right audience, but I still wouldn’t turn it down. :-)

  • http://marketgreener.com Chris Hansen

    The social media experiment is an obvious success—as is the creative that went along with it—but did that traffic convert to sales?

    Chris Hansen’s last blog post..Facebook Connect Now Live On MarketGreener

  • http://TwitPWR.com/7Ko/ Martin Maybruck

    Traffic is one thing but the real question is how did it affect Skittles’ sales? Does anyone know this answer?

    I’m still stunned that after thinking up this marketing stunt they didn’t even bother registering Skittles with a Twitter account…they could learn from Zappos.

  • http://www.tlmarketing.net Tom Lindstrom

    All traffic is welcome, there is never enough of it.However, I do prefer highly targeted traffic if possible.The problem with the traffic from social media sites (especially stumbleupon and digg) is that the traffic does not convert into sales.I would also like to know how much skittles sales increased.

    Tom Lindstrom’s last blog post..Earn Extra Money With Data Entry

  • http://www.frankthinking.com Frank Reed

    As much as I have read about Skittles since this whole thing I haven’t purchased any. Oh and my kids, who do like them, didn’t even know this whole thing happened.

    Great job of making all of us industry types stand up and take notice but in the end did you really care about the candy or the campaign?

    Frank Reed’s last blog post..Information Tsunami is Real

  • http://absono.us Whitney McNamara

    Even putting aside the (entirely valid) ROI question, I’m still left wondering about the overall strategy here. A one time traffic spike is nice enough, but it looks like their traffic is working its way back down to its prior level.

    This feels to me like a sideshow hitting down for a couple of days, rather than a strategy; it’s a gimmick, in the sense that it’s non-reproducible and doesn’t appear to lay any foundations for developing their online presence. As the novelty of “oh, look, skittles.com is (twitter | facebook | wikipedia | flickr | youtube) today” wears off, you’re left with something that offers even less reason to visit than a standard corp. product site. There is literally no “there” there.

  • http://twitter.com/tomasgonsorcik Tomas Gonsorcik

    Please, someone release the list of top 10 referrals to http://www.skittles.com into public domain, so that we can have a straight talk about where this ‘impressive’ traffic is coming from.

  • http://www.sanling-cn.com Pipe fittings

    I can’t ever say that the homepage of Digg helps me reach the right audience, but I still wouldn’t turn it down.

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  • http://www.rblevin.net RBL

    Accolades are appropriate. But drawing conclusions is premature.

    The campaign creative is brilliant — that is, creating a small overlay that leverages the top Web 2.0 services. Brilliant, and cost effective, too. No wheels being reinvented here. And not the usual me-too stuff one would expect from mainstream marketers.

    Now they’re collecting lots of eyeballs that they can market to going forward. I’m willing to bet they are brainstorming calls to action that will drive sales, and will start implementing these once they collect a sufficient number of friends in the network.

  • http://www.socializedpr.com/ joel

    I don’t think a onetime spike is any measure of success at all. A drawing for a free ShamWow!® would have drawn just as many visitors and would have cost just $19.95 plus $7.95 shipping to implement.

    joel’s last blog post..Social media noobs, gurus, and hardboiled egg recipes

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  • Chaunna Brooke

    for many programmers and web developers this web traffic really helps. for me as a writer i also find earnings because of this business. well, i also have my own site now.

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  • http://www.newreil.com basmin

    thank you, this article was a little revealing about social media

    basmin’s last blog post..Kampanye Damai Pemilu Indonesia 2009

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