Well, there is a lot of debate about the new Skittles.com floating around. I'll weigh in my 2-cents: good experiment, I'm impressed that Agency.com was able to sell the idea through, but how much does this target your consumer? And on another note, way to rip off Mondernista! (which came from Minneapolis' own Zeus Jones). Yes, it got you buzz, but will it be short lived? According to Thought Gadget, it is already seeing a fall off. I will say though, it is impressive to get as much buzz as they did, and most brands would kill for that.
On another note, we have heard that a certain amount of control needs to be surrendered when you are doing a social media experiment. However, generally speaking it is a good idea to snatch up all domain names, twitter names, etc that would allow anyone to pose as your brand online. Skittles missed the boat big time on that one, leaving:
http://twitter.com/skittles_com
wide open. Someone is spamming the heck out of skittles.com, re-tweeting every 30 seconds or so:
Ooops.Overall I'm glad to see a brave client, but I've never been a fan of using someones creative idea, even for a different product.
UPDATE: the same spammer has www.twitter.com/ _skittles_com, and I think we can expect more as the day goes on. Look at this screenshot of the homepage:
4 comments:
The Skittles.com user was me. Isn't twitter for advertising? :)
After the blog buzz dies down, probably next week, the Skittles site will shine for what it was designed to be: a collection of discussion and community around Skittles.
Besides the initial novelty (LET'S SWEAR AND PUT "SKITTLES" IN OUR TWEET SO WE GET PICKED UP ON THE MAIN PAGE!) and blogger fascination, people generally talk about Skittles in a positive light. It's the perfect brand to try this effort. It's too bad they had to suffer through the trolls because they were the first ones.
I agree Libby, it might not have been implemented 100% perfectly (and putting twitter as the home page might not have been right), but as a brand trying something new they deserve to be applauded for their efforts.
how's that saying go? "talent imitates, genius steals."
bravo to brave clients willing to experiment and try something beyond just a pretty 30seconds of film or a page 4-color bleed ad in US Weekly. hopefully, the skittles client and agency will go back, calibrate, and work on the next idea, original or "borrowed". ;)
here's a good "he said/she said" recap of the skittles stunt. http://is.gd/lLN1 via @armano
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