The social media gurus sure have some candy up their butt about Skittles showing the twitter search for their product as their homepage.
Some called the stunt a failure because Skittles doesn’t use twitter. Some sound actually angry, going as far to say that they shouldn’t spell out the name Skittles in their tweets, “so we can talk about their campaign WITHOUT making it seem like a success.”
It obviously wasn’t a failure, because it brought thousands of people to their site, and got even more people twittering about Skittles. This is free advertising for them. That they took advantage of it makes them smart, not stupid.
I just hate these social media “experts” who think only they understand what twitter is for and how it should be used. They way they are behaving over this silly thing makes me think they are just jealous of a company that found a way to use twitter to its advantage in a far better, quicker and simpler way than they did. The opportunity wrote itself, and Skittles took advantage of it. That’s good marketing. That they didn’t have to spend time gathering followers and following 5,000 people and sending auto DMs to each of them to do it, probably drives these Thought Leaders crazy.
Maybe I don’t understand social media or Web 2.0 or whatever buzzwords you kids are using now. But I do understand that I have a sudden craving for Skittles.
I don’t even like Skittles, but I’m going to go out and buy a case of them today as a small gesture. Think of it as a capitalist version of the middle finger gesture, pointed at all those “thought leaders” who got their panties in a bunch about a candy company tasting the twitter rainbow.
