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Despite Criticism, Skittles.com=Successful
Those of you that are pretty well connected in the marketing world have undoubtedly heard that Mars Candy launched a new http://www.skittles.com site recently, igniting a massive onslaught of conversation about the new site and whether or not it was an effective redesign. As you can see the site itself is little more than a portal that overlays popular social media sites, allowing consumers to easily browse what the public is saying about the candy brand.
I’ve been pretty shocked that much of the chatter among marketing practitioners has been so negative. These negative comments have centered around two main criticisms: That the format of the site was a ripoff of ad agency Mondernista’s site and that it was a bad idea because a number of jokesters posted obscene messages with the Skittles hashtag, just to see them posted in the site’s Twitter stream.
I think these are both pretty inane arguments. For one, outside of ad folk, nobody cares who came up with the idea for the technological application first. Did the critics think Modernista would be the last company to utilize that new technology? That’s not how the world works these days…Skittles took an idea that broke ground last year and modified it to draw attention to the brand and its impact on our culture.
As far as whether or not the site was a good idea and worth the hassle of the silliness and obscenity some people posted through the site, I think the millions of hits and 600,000 Facebook fans they’ve accumulated through the site answers that question. These are truly unprecedented statistics for a packaged goods site. After all, when was the last time you visited a candy website? Chances are the answer to that question is a resounding “NEVER.” Also, don’t discount the fact that by placing their Facebook presence behind the site in an effort to recruit fans, they’ve given themselves a vehicle with which they can market to these people on an ongoing basis through frequent updates. This will be key to extending the shelf life of this effort.
I think the site has been and will continue to be a massive success for the candy brand, but I do think they could have done even more to capitalize on the site redesign. Like what, you ask? : ) Well, wouldn’t it have been great if they would have orchestrated a massive product giveaway – I envision Mars flooding several big cities with street teams, giving away those little fun packs of Skittles. Or maybe they could have held some sort of contest for a lifetime supply of Skittles, of course requiring some form of consumer participation in order to win. We could come up with a million of ‘em.
The bottom line is that even though interactive and social media channels are becoming more and more important, they can’t function on their own. By using traditional advertising (gasp!), guerilla marketing and other integrated channels, brands have the power to make sure that brand perception is high and word-of-mouth is positive.
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