Taste the Rainbow of Fruit Flavor
The hoopla generated this week by the recent Skittles website redesign has been remarkable. For all three of you that haven’t seen it, the Skittles.com homepage is now a daily rotation of various social media sites from Twitter to Facebook to Wikipedia today.
The Internet was all ‘atwitter’ about the move, generating buzz around the brand in a way I’ve rarely seen it — positive or negative. And the haters have certainly come out in full force. I can’t even count the number of blog posts I’ve read decrying the Skittles stunt as stupid, inane, pathetic, silly — you get the idea.
And that is exactly the point. What Skittles has pulled off is brilliant. Brands spend millions of dollars in a desperate struggle to generate buzz. Skittles did it without spending a dime.
So I don’t care what anybody is saying about the quality or relevance of the campaign. Skittles took a huge risk by opening their brand to the user community. In return they did that elusive thing marketing is always trying to do: they got everyone talking. And positive or negative, it just doesn’t matter. Because in the end, the only thing folks will remember is the rainbow of fruit flavor.
I think I’m going to go out and buy a pack of Skittles.
