Is Skittles onto something?

The remake of Skittles.com has provoked some predictable debate. When I first saw the site Friday afternoon, I knew immediately how it would go. It would enter the typical ad industry echo chamber: Did Agency.com rip off Modernista? Sure enough, immediately after I posted about the site on Twitter and Adfreak, that’s where it went.

Let’s put that to rest: Yes, it clearly got the idea of an “un-site” from Modernista’s innovative Web site makeover a year ago that points to the social Web to define the shop. Here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter. The ad world needs to get over the propriety of ideas. On the Web, as Ana points out, it’s about trying things, building on the existing, testing and adjusting.

What’s more interesting to me is what Skittles might mean for the future of the brand microsite. I confess that I have a long-held skepticism for nearly all microsites. They seem outdated and mostly pointless. Their shortcomings are made all the more obvious at a time of social media. For the past several weeks, I’ve been neck-deep in submissions for digital agency report cards. The product microsites are nearly uniformly terrible. I keep asking myself why I’d want to go there to play that Flash advergame, upload my photo on a snowflake, get immersive with rum. I simply don’t get it.

The old playbook for Skittles would be to make a Flash microsite that matches up to its “Taste the Rainbow” tagline created by TBWA. Agency.com could have and truth be told, usually does that. Instead, it borrowed the Modernista idea to let others define what you're about. The crucial difference is this isn’t an agency but a candy product owned by Mars. Skittles did a small thing in aggregating the conversation out there on YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, et al. The statement, however, is quite interesting. As someone from Agency.com mentioned to me about the they-stole-the-idea hubbub: “More companies should learn: It's not about them, but about what their customers are saying about them.”

People are, in fact, talking about Skittles out there. Check it out for yourself. It’s true what Gary Vaynerchuk says: Twitter.com isn’t nearly as interesting as search.twitter.com. I spent the weekend monitoring the conversation about the site at search.twitter.com. What amazed me was not just how many people were talking about the site, but how much other Skittles conversation is out there. Quite a few people put Skittles in vodka, for instance. That’s a pretty interesting trend for Mars to know. Also, it seems chocolate Skittles are disgusting.

Earlier in the week, I spoke with one of the top digital strategists at a major holding company. He told me social media is incredibly important for brands, especially packaged goods. There’s no reason for people to go to their sites, he said, but the conversations are happening out there. “There’s a business model for CPGs there,” he said. The idea is that all that conversation provides an opportunity for brands to listen, troubleshoot, reach out to fans, maybe even come up with product and marketing ideas. The execution of Skittles.com can be quibbled with. It would be nice to see the brand do more than just aggregate conversation. It might not even be the ideal product for this approach. Yet I think Agency.com and Skittles are onto something with it, “ripoff” or not.

Comments

[BarbaraKB]

Brian, Skittles may be winning today with blog linkbait @ Twitter search this fine Monday morning (a great time to do Twitter buzz) but Skittles has a big 404 fail @ Google search. See here: http://tdurl.com/c9

[George Nimeh]

I think the fact that it is a creative rip-off matters. I think the fact that this isn't the first time agency.com has made a serious error of strategic judgment with regards to their use of social media matters even more. I think the fact that they've just tacked a brand logo on top of Twitter and claimed ownership sucks.

That's what I think. ;-)

[Rachel]

What I'm interested in is not today or tomorrow or the next few days, as people 'discover' that Skittles is doing this, but what they do after, when the conversation gets back down to normal levels.

I hoping, assuming, that agncy.com did some research beforehand about the level of conversation which makes it worth their while doing this and get value from it moving forward. If it's a short, tactical campaign site just for the buzz, then it's nowhere near as interesting.

I'm also guessing at some point they'll change the home page and leave Twitter in the 'Chatter' section and add something else there.

[Keith Richman]

I agree with you that the idea of an expensive microsite is silly, but I am not sure i really got anything from this campaign. it needed a bit more custom work - that I am sure twitter would have done for free - to be effective.

In the future, publishers will create more of the microsites as a value ad related to the media buy i think.

[michael maurillo]

i havent had a chance yet (since i'm surrounded by them) to ask anyone that 1. is not in the marketing industry, and 2. has never been on twitter before, what they're impression is of the "site", and more importantly, of skittles as a result.

right now, rip-off or not, i think this is a win for agency.com as a... er, agency. i say that b/c i'm impressed in their ability as an agency to convince their client to take a risk like this. granted, it fits skittles new brand personality, but still, having been on that side of the table when your client says no to great idea for the wrong reasons, agency.com had to have done something right to get the green light. i commend skittles, as well.

but, to my initial point, nobody cares about that stuff except us. so i 100% agree with Rachel, once the (industry) buzz-dust settles, i think it would be worth revisiting this topic, Brian. see what the site "looks like" when the twitteratti moves on to the next brand gets social and skittles has some research to talk about.

[Matt Daniels]

I get the philosophical statement by Skittles. But to your point on micro-sites, the user engagement is still lacking. I suppose that this is more a product of the fact that Skittles is a rather tangible brand; one where I can't imagine an efficacious online strategy.

Then again, if I had to choose between a twitter aggregator and a microsite, the former is definitely the lesser of two evils.

[Lars Bastholm]

I’ve been thinking about this Skittles thing. And why people hate it and/or love it. First let me go on record as saying that I think every brand should do something like skittles.com as part of their social media strategy. But should it be all they’re doing in the digital realm? No. In fact, it could very well be the death of digital marketing, if it all went that way. With a bit of practice, even the least tech savvy client could probably build a floating navigation that linked to all the UCG content and the spots created for a brand. Done. Goodnight and thank you. It was a fun 15 years.

So what’s missing? Well for one (granted without having done any user research, aside from asking a few folks not in the industry), outside of all the twitterati who can’t get enough of dissecting our collective navels, most people see the Skittles site as a utility, a tool, not a brand effort. And not a very useful tool at that. My respondents were like, uhm, yeah, I don’t really care what people are saying about Skittles on Twitter. Why would I care about Flickr pictures? If anything, they were expecting more of the crazy and quirky stuff that they see in the TV spots that they love.

I realize we’ve all buried the microsite. Fair enough, it had a good run. And I tend to agree: Why on Earth would I go to most brands’ sites in the first place? What’s in it for me as a consumer? But I would argue that Skittles.com goes to a new extreme in turning one-way conversations, as we knew them from microsites, on its head. It used to be “come and play with us on our turf on our terms”, now it’s…wait…it’s exactly the same! There’s even an age gate. On a kid’s candy site?!?

Just letting it all hang out does not make for engaging and involving content. What happened to seduction, to entertainment, to – dare I say it – selling? In hipster terms, it’s, like, “extrovert is the new shy”. Put that on a tee shirt and sell it at a tweet-up, kids.

I think we need bigger brand stories. Ideas that are not rooted in one-off stand-up comedy TV-spots, but in a genuine insight about the brand and the role it plays in consumer’s lives played out across a multitude of platforms.

Utility as branding sounded great on paper, and we all loved Nike +. But it’s been three years and that’s still the only strong example people bring up. Maybe it’s time we realize that most brands have nothing particularly useful to bring to the table other than the emotional connections they can make through communication?

To me that is the final frontier in digital marketing: when are we going to be able to use all the amazing digital channels at our disposal to make an emotional two-way connection to consumers? The Obama campaign did a stellar job of doing just that. Maybe we need to learn something from that!

[David Bentley]

In the main I have to agree with Mr Bastholm (and for the record contractually I am actually not obliged to do so). This activity feels like it should be part of a bigger idea or strategy. If this is the sum of the campaign then it can't be long for this world. They need to find a topic... get people chatting and discussing using topics that sit at that famous intersection of punter and brand and use this tool as a monitor of the conversations. It seems as if the only conversation that has been developed is a self indulgent industry one that fails to serve the brand well... unless we are their target punters!

I am afraid that as Mr Nimeh rightly points out... ACOM have a history of generating chatter around a client/prospective client's brand that doesn't necessarily serve the client very well. Maybe on this occasion they will be able to successfully retrofit something valuable for the brand.

[Shiv Singh]

My take - its great as a part of a larger digital effort but I wouldn't want it to be the defining effort. A wikipedia entry doesn't create a craving, seeing racial slurs in a twitter search results stream enabled via Skittles.com is alienating and pointing to conversations only fuels voyeurism not participation. I've discussed this more on my blog at http://www.goingsocialnow.com

[Tom Cunniff]

Old-fashioned brand narcissism, advertising style:
We are the center of the universe. Everyone cares what we say.

Modern brand narcissism, social media style:
We are the center of the universe. Everyone cares what people say about us.

To borrow a lyric from the Talking Heads, "same as it ever was, same as it ever was..."

[Alan Wolk]

Bottom line is: they did it first, it's getting a tremendous amount of MSM play, and for the amount of money it cost (our host, @bmorrissey just tweeted that "this probably cost less than TBWA spends on catering for one Skittles spot" it's paying off for them in spades.

Armano just sent me this link to MSM mentions: http://is.gd/lBwd - there's a lot of them and Skittles effort is getting lots of ink in places that rarely mention ad campaigns.

Every time the word "Skittles" appears in a headline, there's some value, because after all, it's just a candy: I already know whether I like it or not. And if I like it, seeing the name just serves as a reminder and makes me feel it's a pretty cool candy right now.

What they need to do is figure out a way to capitalize on the buzz going forward, do something else that keeps Skittles top of mind.

Not sure what all the whining and rending of clothes is about. It's a short-term promotion that generated way more buzz than anything that's been done for quite some time. And you are 100% right Brian- the One Show types have got to get over the whole "it's been done before" trip. As if the average Skittles eater was going to see this and angrily pronounce "Man, I can't believe they ripped off the Modernista! site. Losers."

Final point: this is a limited time offer, so to speak. It's not like other brands will be able to do anything even remotely similar for a while now, given the amount of MSM coverage. So our twitter feeds are safe. For now.

[Alan Wolk]

PS: Biz Stone should write Mat Zucker and Joan Zulowski a nice fat check next time he gets some VC money. This promotion (or, more accurately, the amount of press it's been getting) has been just as kind to the Twitter brand as it has to Skittles.

[Stephen Thompson, ECD iCrossing]

Just remember, black velvet paintings of Elvis or dogs playing poker get looked at, talked about, even bought. But for the right reasons? Same logic applies here--just being talked about isn't necessarily valuable to a brand. Crap is crap. Gimmicks rarely work long term. Smart marketers look for inherent drama and brand truths to create lasting value to customers vs. chasing the trends of the day. There's a huge difference between a timeless concept (like Apple's 1984 spot) and a badly executed attempt at whatever (skittles.com?).

[David Armano]

Brian,

I could not have said it better myself. Especially the tie into CPG. This is being overthought. The stealing angle is irrelevant—it would be like saying Guy Kawasaki stole the idea for content aggregation.

This was most likely meant to be a buzz generator, and it got it. And personally, it made me smile. It's human behavior, raw and unedited.

[crawford]

Taste the rainbow. Be the community.

[John Lane]

The death of the microsite is highly overstated; and that's a good thing since they're only now starting to get good. Some of that good is due to the ability to make them more interactive via social media site integration.

So my problem with the Skittles stunt isn't that they mined (or hijacked) Twitter. It's that they didn't use the incredibly accessible and easy-to-work-with Twitter API to pull those tweets into a branded site... sort them by category... respond to them... and give something back to the tweeter. Then maybe—just maybe—they'd also have a way to build on the buzz.

@johnvlane

[George Nimeh]

Today, they demoted Twitter.

Skittles Swaps Homepage from Twitter Search to Facebook Page
http://mashable.com/2009/03/03/skittles-switchesto-facebook/

Fail.

That was Outcome 1 (of 2 possible) that I said would happen. I just didn't think it would happen so fast:
http://www.i-boy.com/weblog/2009/03/skittles-twitter-turducken.html

[Jessica Gottlieb]

Even though Skittles is big in our world, there's the whole rest of the world.

If it's a failure (and I'm of the camp that thinks it is) at least it's a small failure, they don't have huge traffic anyhow.

[Eric Reagan]

I think they should have taken things one step further and created a experience around what people are talking about, not simply linking to it. Anyone can create a facebook group, search twitter for skittles comments, or create a wikipedia entry.

If using social media is the basis for your campaign, I do not see that reflected in the videos on youtube or other offline initiatives.
Would also be more engaging to have a voice on twitter. Engage in the conversations online. Lead. Do more than simply gather the info under one tent. Inspire. Just my 2 cents.

[Jason Wallis]

I think it is classic!!! Web 2.0 all the way! Seth Godin would love it!

[mcluhead]

@bmorrisey

- I'm grateful to see you hit the nail on the head that most brand sites are worthless.

- It's fine to copy an idea as long as you don't claim it's original (and there are no legal issues). But the media and adchatter class shouldn't promote an unoriginal idea as innovative either.

- It's a good idea to listen to what's going on in social media. But this isn't the job of creative directors or media directors per se. Sounds like something PR, account planners, or media research folk need to pay attention to -- and filter back to the appropriate executives.

[How to get rid of cellulite]

think they should have taken things one step further and created a experience around what people are talking about, not simply linking to it. Anyone can create a facebook group, search twitter for skittles comments, or create a wikipedia entry.