Critics are still mulling over the positives and negatives to the new Skittles.com. According to Freddie Laker in his article in Ad Age, the design is in the right direction. Interestingly enough, (and I certainly had not thought of it this way), he uses Skittles’ number of Facebook friends – 597,705 when this was posted – as an indicator of the early success of the new site. Dramatic influxes have also been scene in their YouTube page’s comments.
This makes sense, but other critics are still slamming the new site. In the social media blog Social Media Explorer, Jason Falls writes about the negative response to the new site. He comments on the fact that Skittles isn’t fully participating in the interaction aspect of social media and even further, not adding to its transparency. Furthermore, this type of campaign may have worked better with products with more “daily rituals” like coffee brands, but not with something like candy. He concludes that the new site is a train wreck, butting heads with more positive outlooks.
In an interesting outlook on the situation, Li Evans of SearchMarketingGurus.com writes that Skittles “doesn’t get” social media. He agrees with Falls that Skittles isn’t actually participating in anything in that it does not actively participate in Twitter discussions. In his article, he references an offensive Twitter feed that appeared on the site. Apparently, the Skittles Twitter page is just a running feed of anything posted with the word “Skittles” in it. Skittles doesn’t even have a Twitter account, so then, how does this help them to be more proactive in new social media? It’s not, and in my opinion (still), I think this is just a trick to get people talking more about Skittles, not for them to be a pioneer of any sort.
