I have been waiting to see who would be first to rock the social networking site Twitter, with an interesting and conversation worthy campaign. I can now announce that I am still waiting. This may not be a bad thing either. Skittles [Mars Corporation] have taken the conservative approach to the campaign and in doing so have not offended the throngs of Twitterers that are tweeting about the initiative. 

 

Mars Corp. have basically converted skittle.com in to a search aggregate of Twitter that displays the real time conversation of key words on Twitter that relate to the Skittles brand. They then seeded the refresh and are watching what happens. There is a little overlay that links off to other areas of the site for further exploration. It's a simple concept and in my opinion only relevant because they are first to market. This type of campaign is the 'little toe in the water' approach and is more exploratory than anything else. There is very little risk to this campaign and very little cost as well. So was it worth it? Sure if all you are trying to do it get some PR buzz then I can say it worked. There will be a little brand lift for a couple of weeks and maybe it'll hit the bottom line with a few extra boxes sold in Q2. For companies only planning from quarter to quarter its just fine. It's also just fine if you are trying to experiment with cost cutting marketing campaigns in this time of global economic bla bla.

 

Did it rock the social media world? Not from the posts and tweets that I have read. But that's not a bad thing either. Skittles are now on the radar of the social media elite and I hope that there is a part two to this so that I can stop waiting for that big day.