Skittles - good for the brand or good for the marketers?
A week has passed since Skittles.com relaunched and debate is still raging. Has this been a triumph for the brand - clever harnessing of social media to deliver an authentic user-generated experience, or a triumph for the team behind the idea?
There’s no denying the idea is clever - use Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia as the foundation for the Skittles site. It doesn’t just integrate their feeds or API’s, but actually has them at the core of the offering.
It’s also a brave move, throwing open the doors with an inability to moderate commentary on the brand. I guess the point of view has been taken, that any brand chatter is better than no brand chatter.
At one point the “#skittles” tag was being so inundated with inappropriate material (abusive messages, porn links etc) that the company had to redirect traffic to its Facebook page.
A large part of the Twitter commentary taking place at present, is not from the supposedly ‘youth-oriented’ market discussing cherry vs orange flavour, but rather marketers discussing the value of the campaign.
So, did it work? The answer is probably. If getting your brand talked about is deemed working, then great. It certainly won’t work for all brands and caution should be shown.
Who did it really work for then? It has to be the marketers behind the idea. They’re the real winners here - a first for the idea and a case study for other brands to ponder.
Burger King’s “Whopper Sacrifice” campaign
How many friends would you abandon in real-life for the chance at a free Whopper? Not many I’m guessing.
Well, Burger King developed a Facebook campaign around this idea where users were encouraged to dump 10 friends to receive a free Whopper. Unfortunately Facebook regarded this as running afoul of their rules as each dumpee received a notification that they’d been axed from someones friend list.
Douglas Quenqua of the New York times presentes an interesting position on this: “As social networking becomes ubiquitous, people with an otherwise steady grip on social etiquette find themselves flummoxed by questions about “unfriending” people: how to do it, when to do it and how to get away with it quietly.” Keep reading…
Stats: Traditional Media Use Stabilizes as Online Rises (eMarketer)
New stats show that while traditional media is still king, we’re seeing some big shifts in the way people consume media. That said, not all forms of new media are delivering the same buoyant results:
Blogs are up 11% over 3 years, social network sites are up 9% and shopping websites are going through the roof, while RSS feeds and podcasts are slowing.
Check out the data from eMarketer
Digital Marketing / Those Forums
http://www.thoseforums.com/ - Digital Ministry is a site dedicated to Australian digital marketing and media professionals. The site aims to provide members with the information and tools necessary to advance their career in the industry, while having some fun on the way up