Silly Skittles, this trick is for kids

Okay, so by now, everyone knows that Skittles jumped head first into Social Media yesterday, and by today (24 hours later) has recognized what many of the rest of us already had known: its a shallow pool. Or a pool of shallow people. Either way, a bit of a mess. Like I wrote THREE years ago folks, just because its the new thing, doesn't mean its right for your message, or at least the way you might initially think about going about it.

A brief history of Skittles Marketing, ca. March 2 - March 3, 2009: "Edgy" ad campaign moves to Social Media by using the Skittles brand feed on Twitter as the home page, accepting all posts and all posts using the word "Skittles". (User name, "Skittles", incidentally, not secured. A lonely woman with a cat and an abandoned Twitter account, #skittles, presumably gets a lot of misdirected traffic.) After discovering a preponderance of negative and/or objectionable posts coming through on the Twitter feed, decide on Tuesday to instead use their brand's Facebook presence as their new website. Rude comments continue on both sites.

So, Skittles discovered that the prime users of Social Media and their demographic overlap. What they hadn't learned was that Social Media isn't about them, its about the community. By hijacking a third party site like Twitter and claiming it as your own, you are undermining the validity of that community.

Hint: Marketing is a lot more than simply mixing in equal parts audience reach, clever messaging, and good product. It takes a bit of thought, consideration, and strategy. Those leading the social media revolution are brilliant, truly, but just a little green. Hey kids, marketing fundamentals are still relevant.

Still, I wouldn't be too concerned. Former Coca-cola CMO Sergio Zyman built a career talking about the New Coke debacle. I assume this will have a silver lining as well.