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Skittles, the Twitter turducken



As some of you may have noticed, the Skittles homepage now is an overlay onto Twitter and several other social networking sites. Instead of creating a brand, they're putting their brand out there for others to define and play with.

Great, right? Join the conversation! Get involved! Let your brand be free! Get on the 2.0 bandwagon! Drink the social media Kook-Aid! Well, I must admit I think this one is a bit shit.

The fact that they’re using Twitter means that anyone can say anything, and the comments and links show up on the screen alongside their brand. Unlike, say, Wikipedia, YouTube and Flickr which lets you moderate and control a bit better. That's an invitation for people to act like kids (which we all like to do when give the chance, right?) and write whatever comes to mind. Worse still, you can post links to other content which is completely out of their control.

Rubbish strategy. Fail.

Making matters worse, Agency.com’s concept was absolutely stolen from Modernista!’s work in 2008. Check out this post I wrote in March, 2008 complimenting Modernista! on their work, “Modernista! walks the talk”.

Blatant creative theft and unoriginality. Fail.

And let's remember that Agency.com was also behind one my all-time favourite embarrassing social media disaster moments: The Subway pitch during which they told the world, "When we roll, we roll big." Normally, I wouldn't bring it up. I'd just let it languish in the archives from 2006. But in this case, given the fact that this is another horrible implementation of a social media strategy by an agency that should know better, I feel compelled to point it out.

AKQA's David Bentley wrote a nice guest piece here on i-boy about that particular viral debacle and mishap. here's what he wrote at the time:
From the broader perspective I am somewhat disheartened that an agency of such profile and repute should make such a viral attempt. It reverts our entire industry back to 1997 where large companies were worried about giving significant business to ‘crazy funky webshops’. In 2006 we are in a different environment where media budgets are shifting rapidly online and now accounting for $10bn globally. We need to be professional and manage this business and to instil confidence – this activity does nothing of the sort. Is it any wonder that some of our finest digital alumni are taking senior jobs with traditional agency brands even though many are derided for not ‘getting it’? They may not ‘get it’ but they are respected and they sure understand client management and building long-term mature business relationships.
I think that's still true today.

It is worth asking the old question, "Is all news good news?" And as Luis Carranza points out, they’ve just tacked their brand on top of it. They haven’t engaged in a conversation. All they’ve done is encourage juvenile behaviour. If that was the brief, bravo. Doubt it was, however. If it wasn’t, FAIL.

I see two outcomes:

1. Skittles pulls the campaign off Twitter because it is too far out of their control, and Agency.com realizes that they’ve f*cked up yet again.

2. The buzz dies down, and nothing interesting remains.

Here's Wikipedia inside Skittles inside Modernista!, posted on Flickr! Call it a Twitter turducken.

@iboy is on Twitter, btw.


UPDATE 1: Many other posts worth reading on this:

Skittles: A Brands With Balls Or More Copy, Paste?
Sam Ismail

Is Skittles onto something?
Brian Morrissey

Originality then relevancy, in that order
Mark Hadfield

UPDATE 2: See "Outcome 1" above ... The part about Skittles pulling the campaign off Twitter.

Skittles Swaps Homepage from Twitter Search to Facebook Page
As Charlene Li notes in the comments, it’s possible that Skittles plans to rotate the various social media channels on the homepage. Regardless of whether this is true, I still believe it’s important to point out how nasty (insults, racial slurs) things can turn out when you give control of the content on your site to users, some of which can be completely anonymous.



Monday, March 02, 2009   permalink to archived copy   del.icio.us   DiggIt  

  Comments:

I LOVE how you're cutting through the hype and recognising the unoriginal flava of this particular joint.

I'm doing a pimp the Tweet Readings experiment post right now as well btw :)
# posted by Blogger Sam : 4:12 PM, March 02, 2009  

People love a bandwagon. The twittering classes, especially. After all, for most people, it's all about 'following'.

Someone posted a link at work this morning saying how brave Skittles' site was.

I had a look.

I asked him why brave. He said because they were the first. Wrong (still remember your Modernista post.) He said because they weren't moderating comments. Hmm, really? Either way, that's not necessarily brave. Just a bit stupid!

My intitial reaction was 'why?' and bandwagon. Plus of course the hype is so prevalent, that contrary Marys like me automatically smell a great big stinky rat.

This guy at work said 'brave', the PR says 'brave', a whole bunch of comments say 'brave'.

But with such an empty idea, the only message is 'Skittles has jumped on a bandwagon'

And that's not choice; that's rough.

George, this Twitter thing realy bugs me. I have so far resisted it and I'm not one of those people who resisted buying a mobile phone (OK I'm going back a bit, lol) or resisted joining facebook.

But what can Twitter do for me that facebook can't?

Drive traffic to my site? Yeah, ok, well at the moment there's not really much to see there, haha, I'm so busy with work and daughter Maggie.

I of course ROFLed and showed my CD your 'how marketers should use Twitter' link.

But then I noticed you posting that 'how businesses are using Twitter' link - that seemed like it had some good ideas?

Things move fast on The Interweb, no?

But I'm with you all the way on this one. Great post. And so glad you said this. I read so much bs about skittles this morning, I was beginning to think I was the one with the problem for thinking it stunk.

And you say it's agency.com? I did google it briefly this morning to see who was responsible. I can't say I even remember what I found out. Real life may have intervened.

But I do remember their 'viral' covering the Subway pitch - and I still remember thinking 'wow, proper frat boys'

Anyhow, keep up the good work, not the stinky work.
# posted by Anonymous hayes : 7:35 PM, March 02, 2009  

Know what you're saying George.. However it must be said that it is rather brave thing for a brand to do this, not just an agency... Brave as in progressive, letting go, not something many FMCGs would do...

As nwr points out, they must be scared shittles.
# posted by Blogger bessen : 11:06 AM, March 03, 2009  

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