Skittles’ Twitter Experiment – Lots of Buzz, But What Next?

The twitter world has been buzzing today due to a social media experiment by confectionary brand Skittles.  Skittles.com was handed over to the twitter community when the website was redirected to a twitter search page for the phrase “skittles”.  Cue thousands of twitter uses tweeting the phrase to get their 20 seconds of fame on the skittles homepage; hundreds of bloggers (like me!) were posting their thoughts on the social experiment, some good, and some bad.

Some believed it was a clear example of a company “not getting it”.  Social Media is about engagement right?  You should be listening, thinking, and engaging the community surely? Not just displaying a load of random tweets that include your brand name?

Some were complimenting skittles.  For trying something new, for experimenting with twitter and social media   After all the world of twitter was buzzing with skittles mentions, every other tweet mentioned skittles and surely that counts for something right?  Well I doubt it is going to sell many extra bags of sweets, but I can’t remember the last time I mentioned or thought about skittles, so there something gained from the stunt.

Whether you believe the move to be a success or not depends, as always, how you define success.  If the aim of the exercise was to put something out there, in the aim of getting some exposure and trying something new, then it is a clear success.  Brand wise, the only harm came from the spammers and comedians who chose post less than complimentary words about skittle and revel in the irony of the statements appearing on skittles.com.

If the objective was to sell more skittles, well, hmmm….I’m not sure it could be deemed a success.

But the bigger question for me is what next for skittles?  They have gained all the buzz which came from the experiment.  But surely the homepage isn’t going to stay like that for an extended period?  It’s not much of a user experience!  It’s not even been done in an aesthetically pleasing way.

So where does skittles take it next? Do they have another stunt lined up? Are they going to use any of the posts they have received today for further activity?

The Buzz was great, loads of exposure for the brand, if only within the twitter community.  They also gain a bit of kudos for having the balls to pull such a stunt and doubtless they will go into numerous presentations as an example of twitter usage, but without something more to follow it up, this will only last so long. Buzz and the viral impact of marketing only last so long, so where next skittles?  What else have you got in store for us?