In today's Wall Street Journal, there's a fascinating article about how Mars Snackfood launched a new website last week for its Skittles candy which attempts to leverage the power of social media. The article states: "Instead of a typical product site that highlights information about or videos and games related to a product, the Skittles website features content created by consumers - most of it gleaned from other websites."
The article mentions how the online buzz for Skittles jumped quickly after its new website launched with comments on Twitter going from just handful to more than 800 overnight. The comments are multiplying rapidly as you'll see on Twitter's search results page for Skittles. But when you review the comments, you'll note that most are merely attempts to land 15 seconds of fame as a tweet (Twitter post) scrolls up the Skittles home page. Additionally, a significant number of posts are quite negative about the product or Skittles attempt to stir up social media buzz. I'm sure that the advertising agency that created this new campaign for Skittles is telling Mars that online buzz is building and generating coverage in the mainstream press such as The Wall Street Journal and Advertising Age. But, would any of the people seeing this buzz ever eat even one Skittle? While Skittles foray in social media will likely garner its agency some advertising industry awards, I doubt that it will do much to sell Skittles.
