Skittles (those little addictive sugary candies) have just launched a very brave website. I say brave because it completely turns the idea of a corporate website on its head and throws out the brand to its users.
If you go to Skittles.com, it loads a little Skittles toolkit widget - on top of a twitter search window with #skittles preloaded.
The “friends” link leads through to Facebook with the skittles widget on top, and photos leads to Flickr.
Whilst it’s great that a brand has actually heard of Flickr and Twitter, I think this website is a really bad idea - only because it’s breaking web convention. It’s fine to bring in content from other websites, but they have completely broken all learnings of website navigation - I actually thought I was back in the Twitter site (I had it open in a different tab) and so was thoroughly confused. It took me a few minutes to work out what was happening with the website, and their labelling isn’t intuitive - they use labels like “chatter” and “friends”, which is meaningless until you’ve clicked on the link.
I am impressed that they’ve put their metaphorical money where their mouth is though - their brand really is in the hands of their users. They’ve already had a bunch of random spam (although spam usually sells something - this is just strange) appearing in their feed and therefore their homepage.
As far as I know, this is the first company to honestly relinguish control of the brand into the hands of their users, from twitter to flickr to wikipedia and youtube. I’m sure they’re monitoring it pretty closely but right now I could upload a p0rn pic to Flickr and tag it as “skittles” and it would appear on their site. (It’s a bit sad but that’s the first thing I considered doing.)
I just really wish they could have done this with better usability. They could have done exactly the same thing with bringing in other sites, but actually followed web convention and made it instantly easy to understand that they were pulling in feeds.
They’ve definitely created buzz but I do wonder how long it will last - how long until the marketing director sees something negative/offensive and decides to yank it, or the spammers really take over.
This post is tagged under: Marketing, customer experience, innovation, transparency
I thought it was incredibly forward thinking for them to let go of their home page, and making it the sum of their social network feeds.
However, perhaps making twitter search the home page wasn’t smart and it should have been done a little differently with different navigation as you say.
Already there are plenty of Twitter users looking to take over the Skittles page, in part annoyed that a big bad brand has come and taken over “their” turf.
At the end of the day though - there are loads more people talking about this product now than there have ever been.
God that’s so ridiculous. I can understand wanting to take over the Skittles page just to mess with the status quo and “stick it to the man” (if I wasn’t a private feed I’d have put something about bums and skittles) but to be annoyed because the brand has actually heard of a technology… wow.
I think once Ashton Kutcher started twittering it lost its underground status. All the DJs at my radio station, and even the old fogey radio stations are now on Twitter - it’s getting mainstream.
As I said, I think it’s a brave thing for Skittles to do, and I’m really impressed they’ve actually had the guts to give up their brand like that. I don’t know if I would have signed it off if I were the marketing person…
My gripe is just with the interaction and how they’ve really broken navigation convention.
But you’re right, people are talking about Skittles, and I noticed them at the counter in the grocery shop today. I didn’t buy them but hey, marketing can only take you so far… I did buy some M&Ms though so Mars is still benefiting through their other brands. :)
[...] Brave - and possibly suicidal - website from Skittles [...]
This is a really interesting case study, but you have to wonder what they really hope to achieve with this?
The great thing about online business is being able to actually measure what you are doing - direct outcomes of actions, I wonder how they plan to do this?
CS - I guess with a brand like Skittles they’d be measuring buzz and talkability.
A candy website isn’t actually that useful, unless you’re looking for something specific like nutrition information or an ingredients list, or possibly where to buy. In the case of Skittles, the candy is ubiquitous and on every shop counter across the western world.
I think it’s definitely still possible to measure the success of this campaign - they just will look at things like media mentions, blog posts, twitter buzz and then “real-life” stats such as packets sold. I’m sure that even with this widget they’ll have basic site stats too - at least the number of visits to their site and where users are coming from.
I think it is a clever idea, if the site does not function to well it will make up for it in publicity it receives.
Skittes has associated itself with some main stream social networking apps, I haven’t thought about Skittles for years now its tweaked with twitter, facebook and flickr
[...] I think I’m going to leave snickers and aero to it and stick with skittles. [...]
Chatter OK
Media OK
Friends OK
The rest just doesn’t work IMHO. And to z-index the div over actual content? - It’s weird and obtrusive, maybe content above the frame, maybe… But the thought of logging in to facebook through a skittles page is laughable. Surely?
Seems like they’ve changed tack because now the navigation widget overlays their Wikipedia page (although it’s hard to tell because the widget covers the title of the page) and instead you have to click on Chatter to get to the Twitter page.
I’m not convinced about how good an idea their approach is, especially as the site doesn’t work at all in Opera - every link you click just reloads the widget over a blank default.htm.
If you like this you can now do one for yourself - http://www.skittlr.com/
7up is taking a similar risk - see http://www.7upfree.ie/moherman/
Friends = Facebook
Pics = Flickr
Chat = Twitter