Nowadays it’s hard not to recognize and praise Skittles for all of their social media efforts. The colorful candy just eclipsed the 6 million “likes” mark on Facebook and has an ever growing fresh, fun, and innovative website. As envious as a position that the brand is in today, it’s hard to believe that not long ago the social web wasn’t as keen as it is now to its customer relationship ideas and strategies. With some clever thinking and a commitment to building community, Skittles has climbed out of a position of mockery and has grown into a shining example of what’s possible with social media.
In March of 2009 the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company (parent company of Skittles) launched headfirst into a unique social media campaign that turned a lot of heads and caught a good amount of criticism. The Skittles.com homepage was given a complete makeover and featured a live Twitter stream. The intentions were good, but the results were disastrous. The stream wasn’t regulated and was wide open for anyone, anywhere, to say anything about the brand. It didn’t take long for negative comments and foul language to show up. Skittles had their backs against the wall and they were forced with no other alternative other then to take the stream off of the main page. On top of this huge mistake, the site was somewhat of a mess. There was a link to a Wikipedia page that didn’t really help or give the visitor anything to get excited about.
Skittles gained a good amount of publicity for it’s daring change. Forbes called it stupid, others called it genius. For the rest of 2009, Skittles began implementing changes for the positive. The Twitter stream is no longer present, but there is now a widget linking up to the official Skittles twitter page. Facebook has it’s own link and a “like” button visible at the top of the page. The web design is original and features a long home page that visitors scroll down to access the colorful content. Within the first couple of frames is a place to vote thumbs up or thumbs down for the newest Skittles creation and there are YouTube videos a plenty. The entire page is covered with Twitter and Facebook share buttons. There is also a place for users to share pictures and videos.
Earlier this year the company became even more active on Facebook and has become one of the sites top fan pages. Several months ago Skittles offered a 2 for 1 deal that only Facebook users could take advantage of. Recently they put up a unique section called “Mob the Rainbow” in which Facebook fans must join forces with other fans to help accomplish tasks. The critics have gone silent and Skittles bold new approach to community building has been nothing less then effective.
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