At the suggestion of @ciaranj I was going to call this post “the age of average marketing”, such are the number of pointless campaigns doing the rounds at the moment, but instead I decided to focus my scathing cynicism firmly on Skittles.
For those of you not aware, Skittles new site has gone all “social media”. That’s to say their homepage is a twitter feed showing all mentions of Skittles, their product pages are links to Wikipedia, their photos are links to Flickr etc. etc. Do you see what they’ve done there? How very web 2.0.
So what annoys me most about this campaign? Surely as an advocate of digital marketing I should applaud anything new, innovative and unusual that creates such a buzz.
Well that’s the problem. Firstly it’s not original or innovative, Boston agency Modernista did this with their own site some time ago.
Secondly, outside of the goldfish bowl that is marketing/advertising/media is anyone really talking about it? Amongst marketers it’s created a fair amount of debate and from what I can see, most of it is pretty negative. But we are a minority, we’re a tiny insignificant subset of the potential Skittle consuming world.
So how will it fair beyond our insular world? Well what I love about social media is that it provides tools that allow people to maintain a wider circle of friends than ever before and talk to those friends more often and instantaneously than ever before.
So will they be talking about Skittles?
Well unless my cynicism is blinding me to some subtle subtext in this campaign it doesn’t appear to be useful in anyway, it’s not entertaining in any way and I can’t see how it’s relevant in any way.
So, no, I’m taking and educated guess here that they won’t be talking about it.
Frankly it is missing that key ingredient. All that relevance, entertainment or usefulness add up to one thing, “give-a-shitability” (a term coined by our much missed former Planner @chungaiz). Or in this case they don’t.
Other than a fleeting, momentary “Oh look what Skittles have done?” how can this campaign create any lasting impact?
Answers on a postcard.
Its day 2 and you’re talking about it AND you’ve now written a blog post.
What would happen if (your fave
)Daily Mail get’s hold of it? They’ll LOVE the language used. They’ll have a complete field day.
I’m gonna tell my mum and cousins – just to see what they think
Yes, but I work in that goldfish bowl that is “digital/marketing/media” as do you!
Fair point on the Daily Mail though, they could well pick up on some inappropriate language and make it into their latest “shock, horror!” headline.
Not sure that constitutes positive brand engagement though!
If the only good thing about the Skittles campaign is that I now can use ‘give-a-shitability’ in meetings then it has not been in vain.
(took me 10 minutes to write the above whilst circumnavigating iphone’s predictive text!)
Jay & Toby,
A blog post is a fitting medium for marking the point in time when skittles did their thing with twitter and facebook.
Goldfish bowl is an appropriate term – skittles may have raised their brand awareness to a glint of social goldfish – but for how long…
How many people are continuing to check out #uksnow now that the A41 has re-opened?
Once around the bowl and it will be onto the next thing.
…can I also just throw in a “Burn them!” for the Daily Mail contingent please?
Lovely to see you here Mr Fishburn. Your comments are always welcome.
Obviously I’m shocked to see a resurgence in the blogging department after a 2 year hiatus. If anyone can enlighten the world then it is you Mr G
I think people outside of marketing are talking about it. I heard about it from three different sources – two were marketers, yeah, but one was just a random friend.
Honestly, I just don’t think the campaign connects the brand to people in any meaningful way. But the buzz is probably good for the brand, honestly.
I completely regret my overuse of the word honestly.
Hi Mike, unfortunately you are probably right, it is leaking out (which is damaging my faith in human nature) and undoubtedly there’s some benefit from this explosion in awareness. I guess what annoys me is that this is a nothing more than a stunt. As a digital campaign it fails to do anything clever, and I strongly suspect will fail to have any long lasting effect. There are so many good examples of using social media but this just put the cause back another 18 months. (Now I’m starting to sound like a revolutionary!)
Thought you might be developing a taste for antisocial media there, so here’s “Skittle Fisting”.
http://skittlefisting.tumblr.com/
The campaign has had some success in penetrating my candy shell. Now I look at packets of Skittles and say “who cares” to myself and indulge in a little shrug. Before the campaign I wasn’t even motivated to shrug.
Worth every penny.
If you’ll excuse me, I have to dash off now. My social network tells me there’s a sale on at DFS and I wouldn’t want to miss it. You never know when there might be another one.
Ah, Mr Dearson, nice to hear from you old chap! If anyone was to introduce fisting to the conversation I knew it would be you
Heh. Didn’t take long for the people to take it down, did it? Pesky people. Not playing by the rules of marketing again.
Seems one of the guys from B3ta had a hand in defacing the Skittle feed: http://tinyurl.com/c39kd9
And a final parting thought for you: http://tinyurl.com/2w4apm
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