Skittles – Using Social Media As A Homepage
Skittles amazed the entire marketing industry with their approach of the new Skittles homepage. Agency.com redesigned the Skittles homepage completely. All pages were replaced by existing platforms that include information or content on Skittles. It’s an improvement if you compare it with the old website, but how many steps did Skittles actually take forward with this new design?
In this post I’d like to look at the positive and negative aspects of this peculiar case by viewing the trends, review the good things, take a look at the risks this new communication style created, the missed opportunities and to give my humble opinion on this action of Skittles.
First, lets take a look at the trends for this case. Overall, this new website of Skittles was rated highly remarkable by a great amount of bloggers, in both the negative and positive aspect of the word. If you take a look at trends in blogposts on the topic “Skittles” you can see a big boost in numbers, starting from March 2nd.
Blogtrends on Skittles [Icerocket]
These postings vary from tech / marketingblogs like Mashable and Logic+Emotion but also the Wall Street Journal made a post about it. However, marketingcommunication blogs do have the overhault when it comes to writing about this case. Will the end consumer read about this new kind of positioning? And will it be intresting enough for them to spread as well? I guess not.
Almost the same goes for the Twitter trends. The ones who mention the new homepage on Twitter are in fact the marketeers and communication specialists. With a little sidenote: Twitter population consists mostly marketeers.
Mentioning on Twitter [Twist]
If you take a look at the curve above, you can see that it was only a big trend at the day of release. Will people continue talking about it? I doubt it …
When looking at the Facebook statistics, there isn’t a really strong curve in the number of friends. The growth didn’t change radically. This can be an indication that the trends above don’t really reflect the younger target audience of Skittles.
Friends on Facebook [AllFacebook.com]
What are the good things about this campaign? By doing something absolutely remarkable, Skittles created an enormous boost of free publicity. Aside from whether or not this is targeted at the target audience, a lot of people did view the new website. Brand awareness was created among a large group of (potential) customers.
Another thing I really like is the usage of social media. By communicating on platforms the audience uses on a daily basis, the chance people stick and navigate around for a longer time is bigger then on an own created platform. People are familiar with the social platforms and therefore know how to use the website.
Now lets have a look at the risks. By using other platforms, you also depend on the services and technique of other websites. You wouldn’t expect Facebook to go down, right? Well, those things do happen. Skittles putted the top of the conversation on the front page at first – Twitter. What if Twittersearch goes down? You’re website will look like this then:
Broken homepage – March 3rd
Another thing that can be a risk is the trustworthiness of the information on the platform. For instance, if I would like to know something about the ingredients, the widget points me to Wikipedia. How do I know if this information is 100% correct? Users could have altered the information. Ofcourse, Skittles will monitor the changes on the page, but still … It’s a risky thing.
Not all people are familiar with the platforms. How do people that don’t know Twitter perceive the Twitter search interface? Would they even recognize the website as the official Skittles website or just click away? Another risk …
So what are the missed opportunities? The biggest failure in my opinion is the lack of conversation. Of course, Skittles did provide a platform for others to communicate. But why don’t they talk back when people talk about their product? If you’d like to contact Skittles, you’ll get an old fashion web 0.5 contact page. Why not give the ability to conversate throught the platforms Skittles is promoting itself?
When I started this post, I was looking for an attractive visual for the heading. Guess what, press material was nowhere to be found. The “Pics” section only showed Flickr photo’s of images, tagged with Skittles. Those images are copyrighted by the photographer. I tried searching the photos with Creative Common licenses that would allow me to use the image. Nothing attractive, no real good package shots. You’re positioning yourself in the middle of social space. Make sure you’ll talk social and make it easy for people to talk about you. Also, its not possible to link inside some of these pages.
Overall, I really like this case, but thats just because its totally remarkable. It’s a risky thing to do, positioning yourself in this way, but for Skittles I guess it was worth it. The free publicity must have been a good boost in brand awareness. Skittles did miss some opportunities. It would have been better if they’d engaged in the conversation more, but maybe that’s a thing they’ll do in the future. I also think the risky things are greater then the positive things. What do you think about this new approach of Skittles?
(Sources: Mashabe, TechDigest, Experience Matters, LarryRoth.net, MediaPost, AdvertisingAge, econsultancy.com, Twist, Logic+Emotion, Icerocket, AllFacebook.com)
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That’s so cool! Great article!
Thanks Laurens!
Cool post!
Looks like Skittles has understood that their brand belongs to consumers.
With this DNA Skittles might even be heading towards core identity brand in the future?!
Cheers
HEllo GUys.
FIrst thanks for this brillant case study.
AFter I would like to give credits to Modernista, a web agency who had this idea 2 years ago…
http://www.modernista.com
Sorry,
An other thing about the risks of this campain.
The social media part: Who will talk to brands on Facebook ?
Ther’re no intercation !
TO watch commercials: you go on youtube
TO talk about ad campains, you go on Blogs.
What will you do on Facebook, except being a fan of skittles (I am ).
I believe this is an other weakness of this campain.
PIerre
Hi Pierre, thanks for your comment!
I was aware of the fact that Modernista also created a site with the same content showcase.
I didn’t mention that in the article, because I wanted to write about the positive and negative aspects of the website itself, not whether or not it is a rip-off
I think brands should in fact conversate on social media platforms. Its even a start if they’d even enabled a properly way of communiation through Facebook. If you’re displaying yourself as a brand on a social medium, you should be social yourself.
Hi,
Thanks for this article. I’m an MBA student doing research on how blogs and user-generated reviews have changed consumer behavior and corporate marketing strategies. This is a great case study to include in my research! I agree that this should be a dialogue rather than throwing everything against the wall (no pun intended) and seeing what sticks. It’s interesting that Skittles has taken this approach because most CPG companies are reticent to let their brand develop with very little control (i.e. letting anyone on Twitter say whatever they want about Skittles). Generally I’ve found that brands enter the web 2.0 pool slowly, having a CEO start a blog or casually respond to other bloggers they’ve found through Google Analytics or another buzz search platform.
I’m curious as to more of your thoughts on this topic and whether you have some more case studies that you’ve written. I’m trying to research a variety of industries to determine if there are commonalities that can be drawn across industries, thus facilitating more general information/frameworks (yeah, I know it’s so b-school) that marketers can use.
thoughts??
Hi Elizabeth, thanks for your comment!
You’re right about the speed of the brands entering the social space. It’s going way to slow, while consumer expect the presence of brands on their favorite platforms.
You can take a look at the posts I’ve written before at ViralBlog (http://www.viralblog.com/author/mroumen/). Those are mostly case studies on this topic.
Good luck on your research
#Skittlefisting
Very good article!
@Rovef1ster: How do you rate that action of the community? Personally, I don’t believe it has a really negative impact on the brand. For as far as I can see it, its only a trend among a small group. Or am I wrong?
@Mark: Thanks!
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