Against my better judgement I'm going to blog about a corporate website, not becasue of any affinity with the product, but because of the sheer ballsiness of what they are doing.
Skittles are, in my book, alright. Inoffensive little shelled fruit flavoured sweets that never really gave me much cause for thought. Until now. The web presence for the mini-teeth rotters hasn't so much turned the corporate-communications rule book on it's head as much as chewed it up and torn it a new rainbow spectrum.
The direction of skittles.com doesn't run on flashy code or feature incredibly creative content. BUT practically everything is run off social media servers not owned, controlled or even regulated by the product or its parent company.
For instance, the 'products' pages are Wikipedia entries. The photos are from Flickr and the videos are on Youtube. Best of all, if you post any entry into Twitter using the term Skittles, the up it pops on the 'Chatter' page (an aggregator of Tweets on the subject) whether it's positive or not!
It's a bold and exciting move that puts the website into the hands of those who identify with the product - the advocates.
Here's hoping more companies take the initiative and lower the top-down barriers.
S.
2 comments:
I'm going to go outside my comfort zone here and avoid discussing this from a web technology perspective, mostly because there's very little to speak of - the underlying methodology is incredibly straightforward.
Looking at the Skittles mashup, I can't help but feel this is little more than a misguided attempt to capture some of the social media zeitgeist (or 'Mystery Facebook Magic' as I sometimes call it in work). Putting the brand message in the hands of the advocates is as bold a move as you've suggested, but by involving aggregate content from social media Mars have placed the brand message in the hands of the entire Web user base. The opportunities for disaster - be they prankish 'SKITTLES SUCK' Tweets, subtle vandalism of the associated Wikipedia entries, or concerted efforts by rival brands to use the campaign against itself - are many and varied.
Worse, the actual 'site' itself lacks focus and structure. If I visit Skittles.com I want to hear what the people that MAKE Skittles have to say about them. I don't expect a series of glorified redirects to other parts of the Web that may or may not tell me what I want to know. That's what Google is for. Attempts to capitalize on social media movements like this can only be successful long-term as part of a protracted and focused campaign elsewhere on the channel (and I don't profess to know what other Web marketing exposure Skittles currently enjoy). By eschewing a bespoke, message-focused site in favour of such a transient phenomenon as (other people's) social media, Mars may be come to be seen as pioneers, but I can't see this kind of thing taking off without it being taken right back to formula first.
I'm sure there are some great arguments to the contrary, though. :)
NJM
I've been away too long! You have all these new post to read. I'll be back to this one in a minute!
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