What's Next After Skittles.com?
The Social Website Is a Step in the Right Direction
This is almost certainly inspired by Modernista's brilliant redesign from about a year ago. Does that matter? Definitely not. Modernista had it right then and now Skittles does too. Skittles has unabashedly made the bold leap into accepting they can't control the way their brand is defined in today's social web and can only try their best to participate in the conversation. They're taking the good with the bad, and I can assure you all that good is going to dramatically outweigh the bad.
If you want an easy indicator of how this site does, check out the number of Facebook friends it already has in place (an impressive 582,604 at the time of this post). Other measurements, such as the number of comments it has on its YouTube videos and images, and general comments and sentiments can also be helpful indicators, but I think the Facebook figure serves at the simplest indicator for most casual observers.
The reality is, Skittles has done this completely right. This solution was quick to produce, leverages existing communities that have great interest in the product and creates a platform that further engages the consumer. I would recommend any brand with minimal budget and the right kind of audience drop the brand sites they currently have, which I'm guessing aren't terribly effective. The problem is that such a scenario raises an interesting dilemma.
What happens if everyone shifts their current strategy and starts launching these kinds of sites? Don't worry -- it isn't going to happen anytime soon, but some trends will develop.
In a nutshell, I think the novelty will wear off for a lot of consumers. These people certainly want their social media and a big part of a brand's focus will be on creating great quality websites that encourage discussion, communication and participation. The social-media aspects will be achieved by using the web services and integration tools of sites like Facebook. Deep integration with Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect will become more prevalent and brands with budgets will use all of these social features that Skittles has embraced.
However, while social aspects will become more prevalent, brands will keep in mind that consumers also like their sites to be nicely packaged. Moving forward, businesses will create sites with a far higher level of aesthetic value and will work to make sure they retain the ability to at least control the brand visually. They will also differentiate as they always have with great creative and fun concepts that leverage these same social communities. Sites will also be more conscious of usability and not adding complex layers that inhibit the social functions of the third party web services like Flickr, YouTube or Twitter -- which are frequently botched today.
I don't think the age of the microsite is over. The successful microsites, both low and high budget, will undoubtedly have one thing in common: a simple open infrastructure for integrating into popular web communities and leveraging their social nature.
Again, I commend Agency.com for paying attention to great ideas, Modernista for doing it first, but most importantly Skittle's brand team for having the courage to get out there and embrace the web and the new creative process so wholeheartedly. (Of course, Team Skittles could be terrified to death. But, um, congrats anyway...)
~ ~ ~Freddie Laker is the director of digital strategy at Sapient. He has also founded the Society of Digital Agencies, a collective of notable digital agencies focused on thought leadership and positive industry change, and blogs at takemetoyourleader.com.
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Is there a Brand Ambassador at Skittles who will champion the brand and talk to consumers through the shiny new website and be empowered to take action on consumers' behalf? Will Skittles be monitoring the community for actionable ideas and then ACTING on them? Will there be giveaways, contests, and other valuable content distributed through social media outlets?
The answers to these questions will come in time, but it should be understood that where the brand stands today could drastically change tomorrow if Agency.com and their client slack off or fail to stay relevant to their target audience.
http://www.twitter.com/admaven
http://admaven.blogspot.com
At POP in the grocery store, does the consumer remember the Skittles website and that they are a Facebook friend so they want to be loyal to the brand and it's the trigger for purchase?
I'm not claiming that becoming a fan of a brand in Facebook translates to sales, but it will give you an idea if people are coming to the site an choosing to engage at a deeper level as these types of behaviors are the only call to actions the visitor has.
The brand (or the agency) must be vigilant in participating in the these different communities they're aggregating. I do believe, without restriction, that consumers that engage brands and participate in healthy dialog with their peers are far more likely to remember a brand favorably then by interacting with a standard web game. The majority of people find another person's opinion more valuable then a statement coming from a brand. It's a trust thing (with the exceptions of some trusted brands whose word is like gospel).
As usual, that's my two cents. Take it for what it's worth.
-Freddie
Is the conversations that brands want to have really about always about the big party? Campaigns are like parties. They are planned and scheduled. They have a list of people they want to reach. They have themes. They can be memorable. But campaigns are not conversations.
The real paradigm shift here with the Skittles.com is the future of the campaign in the context of the social web. With the increased spending on interactive that has come from the recession, many more brands and their agencies will be focusing on their digital brand reach. Will they take several years to realize that it takes more than a campaign lifecycle or thousands of campaigns to rethink and simply develop that very human trait of having meaningful conversations?
http://www.twitter.com/MATSNL65
http://digg.com/tech_news/Overheard_Conversation_between_Motrin_Tablet_and_anSkittle
Seemingly all things you'd never imagine people talking about, but amazingly they are. They're mentioning it in passing and sometimes as the focus of conversations in all kinds of places across the web. You'd be truly suprised.
The Skittles.com site isn't a campaign for me. It's not about getting people talking. (Although it has in our marketing community without a doubt.) Skittles.com is a brand site. The campaigns that skittles.com does through out the year should be what generate buzz and when they do create buzz that buzz will be captured and shared at the main brand site.
Check out their fan site on Facebook. They didn't get over half a million fans after this site was created. They existed long before (which probably caused their enthusiasm in this idea).
I don't think anyone is expecting skittles magazine to come out anytime soon dedicated to fanaticism about the product, but the reality is skittles amuse people enough everyday to cause them to talk about it even what might be viewed as inane ways. Trust me, I've seen it about far more meaningless and less inspiring products.
This site, used properly, in conjunction with great campaign work will be a big hit for them.
Feel free to email me or call me anytime. I'm happy to talk about it at length.
It's an achievement for them.
But is there really a big idea here or just a technological gimmick?
In 40 years will this still be as fresh and smart as the vintage VW Beetle TV ads (Funeral comes to mind)are today?
I doubt it.
Too much hoo-hah in the digital world is about technology and not about human insight.
What is a brand site? And do most brands really need them?
I've elaborated a bit here and would love to hear what others have to say.
For a while the term as i recall it was "brand immersion." now its made more palatable/poppy with brand lifestyle.
If the technology is fast enough, deep enough, converged enough, "skittles people" will, consciously or not, tell skittles where they are going, and then skittles can lead them there.
This is just a hodgepodge of trendy technology, not a radical new idea. Well, actually, not a new idea at all. The idea was Modernista's. The buzz is much ado about nothing.
This new Skittles approach is a brilliant solution to that fundamental issue. By making their site link to the places people are used to going to and not trying to create some parallel universe they have demonstrated an elegant option that is based on user needs and habits rather than a brand's. And any time you can make your user experience follow user needs you'll win.
Let's give credit to Modernista for seeing this possibility first. But the copycat debate is silly. This isn't some idea that Modernista can own exclusively. (That's like saying Coke ran TV ads first so Pepsi can't). Because this new model is based on how we all use the internet, in some variation or another, this is how we are all going to be doing things in the very near future.