Skittles' social media experiment
Skittles' social media experiment
On 2 March, Mars, the maker of Skittles, scrapped its internet home page and transformed it into an online portal with a collage of content from social networking sites, including Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, as well as Skittles' Wikipedia and Facebook pages.The move was widely hailed as a bold social media experiment, and according to Forbes, this was "all fairly harmless". Except the tweets from Twitter - by day two, users had deluged the site with inane and often profane 'tweets'. Mars was forced to rethink its social media strategy (although the Twitter feed remains accessible from the home page, under the 'chatter' link).
Much has been written about Skittles' social media experiment (322,000 reults for a Google search of 'Skittles social media'). It has been hailed as everything from "a genius piece of marketing" to an "epic failure".
Business Week asks whether allowing consumers, not brands, to control content is fraught with reputational risk. It concludes that the jury is still out, but says that the question was at the centre of a lively debate at the fourth annual Social Media Conference held in London on 2 March. "Much of the discussion centred on the growing popularity of Twitter as a marketing tool. While other social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, were mentioned, the one noticeable omission from the discussion was Second Life, hailed as the next big thing two years ago. Indeed, there was no consensus on which of the social media tools were likely to remain important - or how companies should use them. Despite the fact that many businesses are using social media, plenty are still uncomfortable with the loss of total control other their marketing messages".
Forbes askes whether this means that companies who experiment with Twitter or want to incorporate user-generated content on their Web site are doomed. It concludes, "No, it means they should use a social media aggregator, such as FriendFeed or Plaxo, that pulls together everything people are posting about a subject or a brand on social networking sites, blogs and photo-sharing systems. That is helpful, and this even more so: companies that use some of these services, such as FriendFeed, can view comments and moderate them before they are posted".
It cites PepsiCo, which decided last November that it wanted to work with social networkers who had something to say about the soft drink and snack maker's products. The company started using FriendFeed, which gives users the ability to see comments and to respond to them. While some might see the moderation tactic as a limitation to free speech, Pepsi says it's just making their site G-rated enough for a 9 year old, something Skittles' site is not. The difference between Skittles' experience and Pepsi's was dialogue, says Benjamin Weisman, digital director at ad agency Iris Nation in New York. While Mars attempted to connect with consumers, they merely pulled together a stream of posts containing the word "Skittles" in them. "They missed the opportunity to engage more than a one-time comment," Weisman says.
Business Week says that businesses know that they need to tap the power of social media. "British companies such as mobile-phone retailer Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media use micro-blogging site Twitter to answer customer service queries, as does Comcast. Computer maker Dell offers its followers on Twitter special discounts. Nokia used networking site Linkedin to help market its 5300 phones to professionals, the product's targeted customer base. Others such as Swedish clothing retailer H&M, Victoria's Secret, and Reebok are using Facebook. And according to social technology entrepreneur Peter Kim, the list is growing longer each day. His Wiki lists more than 1,000 companies using social media. It's easy to see why. Take video-sharing Web site YouTube. The four-year-old site boasts 350 million unique viewers each month and is now the second-largest search engine on the web after Google, according to Benjamin Faes, head of YouTube for Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He points to a recent study YouTube did with General Motors that found that the use of YouTube has given the brand a cooler edge with consumers. Faes, perhaps not surprisingly, believes that online video is becoming the media mode of choice because consumers prefer visual storytelling to written text".
Read more:
Forbes - Skittles' Stupid Social Media Trick
Forbes - Twitter Land: Does Your Brand Belong There?
Business Week - When Skittles Met Twitter
Contagious - Tweets not all sweet for Skittles
Wednesday, 18 March 2009 10:12