Search Results for: skittles

Yesterday rainbow-colored candy brand, Skittles launched a new web presence that has caused notice by many in the world of marketing and average web-head-geeks a like. The Mars-owned company gave their site a facelift of sorts that has left some in awe and others in shock.

Now when visitors go to skittles.com they don’t see the typical corporate branded site. Instead they get a fresh serving of social media. The home page is essentially an overlay of search.twitter.com displaying results for the term “skittles.” There are several other navigational features that Skittles has added to point users to other social media outlets such as YouTube and Facebook.

The question was asked here yesterday by Joe Hall and there were as many opinions as there are colors in a bag of Skittles but as of this morning the jury is in. Skittles has taken down its site redesign reports MediaPost.

Apparently putting the brand and its message in a vehicle driven by consumers brings out the good the bad and the ugly.

The good was the fact that yesterday a lot of people were talking about Skittles. I have to admit that unless I am forced to I am not thinking about Skittles or writing a post about them. So to that degree this experiment certainly worked. Buzz was created and people were talking about the crazy colors of the Skittles rainbow.

“Spent the morning making prank bird calls. The sparrows are not amused.”

See the numbers in the graphic? Those are the stats on that random Facebook wall post made by Skittles. And that’s not a fluke. Everyday, there’s an equally random and nonsensical post on the candy’s fan page and every post draws a similar number of “likes” and comments. Most companies would be thrilled to see those kinds of social media stats, but do those high numbers equal marketing success? Depends on who you ask.

AdvertisingAge contents that Facebook is going to redefine the term relevant when it comes to online marketing. In traditional terms, relevant means supplying consumers with copy that discusses the features and benefits of the product or service. Skittles taste fruity. Oreo is a quality cookie. This vacuum sucks better than that one. But those kinds of blurbs don’t spark conversation on Facebook and that’s a problem.