This is a powerful idea in that they've directly inserted themselves into the online conversation. That Twitter search stream aside, the rest of the content they have are pretty much regulated and closed despite being owned by a third party. YouTube has moderator tools, Flickr has moderator tools, Facebook fan pages have moderator tools. And Wikipedia is pretty darn hard to fuck with.
So, really, the only thing they don't have a direct control of is that Twitter search stream. However, Twitter is spending a lot of time right now deleting Skittles spam--I know this from personal experience!--and non-relevant tweets. I'm sure for Ev and team, Skittles is yet another big deal and they wouldn't want to fuck it up.
All in all, I really think this is genius and they're quite safe at protecting their brand's value.
Why would I go to the skittles homepage in first place? Why would I more likely go there when they have a twittr stream of the #skittles tag?
I don't get it. Why on earth do you guys get so excited over this?
That's a ballsy move.
Not at all, it's just plain old PR. Any PR is good PR, remember? Okay, it's a fun campaign and kudos to the agency for talking them into it - but I don't see anything earth shattering behind the smoke and mirrors.
the public controls Skittle's web site, to some degree.
Well, if that's what gets you guys so worked up then you'll be in for a disappointment. The flickr and youtube streams are owned by skittles - no public control. The wikipedia page is (predictably) already protected and will probably stay that way for the time being.
So what's left is the twitter stream, which is basically an animated wallpaper with the occassional bit of foul language.
Hm. Sorry, as said, nice little PR stunt and reasonably executed - but I don't see anyone talking about this in 4 weeks. In fact, expect skittles.com to change back to the classic marketing look once the little hype has worn off.
Just how many bags of candy do you think they'll have to sell for this idea to pay for itself?
I don't think it's earth-shattering, either, but what does that have to do with anything?
What is the value of being the #1 trending topic on twitter? Will they sell more skittles because people read about it on twitter? I somehow doubt it...
If you're at all plugged in, you can't get away from this.
About 99.6% of internet users beg to disagree (that's the percentage of users who don't have a twitter account). Now, as an exercise, try to extrapolate the total reach of this campaign in terms of real world sales.
I don't think it's earth-shattering, either, but what does that have to do with anything?
Well, when I posted my comment the thread was full of people praising this mashup like the second coming. I just wondered if I missed something essential, but apparently this is just a similar effect to the twitter phenomena. - Lots of buzz and little substance.
I think it will be instructive, in much the same fashion as I think anybody trying to make money on the Internet should be willing to give the Pets.com marketing plan a few minutes of their time. I'm sure when some marketers saw the $1.2 million sock puppet Superbowl ad they were convinced a new era had dawned, a cult hero had been born, and they were about to sell a lot of dog food.
Two out of three ain't bad.