If you go to the Skittles homepage you’ll find that it takes you to their results on Twitter Search. In addition to that, you can go to their other social media sites (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube) via a pop-up window. Overall, it’s generated a lot of buzz, much of it negative.  I thought I’d weigh in with my own two cents.  

So far, I think it’s a great success.  It’s a low-risk, low-cost means of generating discussion and of starting a conversation with its consumers.  If it doesn’t work, it’s not that big of a deal.  It’s unlikely to drive teens away from the product.  More importantly, it’s got people outside of their demographic actually talking and thinking about Skittles.  I can’t remember the last time I thought about the product.  It was likely Halloween, when I was trying to figure out what to give the droves of kids that come to our door.  Consider how difficult and expensive it would be to generate that kind of awareness and discussion using traditional means.

The only mistake they may have made is placing Twitter at the forefront of their strategy. From what I’ve seen and read, Twitter seems to be most used by those in their late 20s and up. Not exactly the target demo for Skittles.

Before you go off thinking how original the idea is, it’s been done before.  Our friends over at Modernista! have done a pretty nifty job with using other sites to build the content for their website.

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