Skittles Rethinks Relinquishing Brand Control

Last week, Erik Uetz at Sundog wrote an interesting post on our blog about the Skittles out-on-a-limb social media experiment. The experiment involved surrendering “brand control” to the consumer via social media interfaces. Essentially, the home page for Skittles became a real-time feed of the brand’s Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages. Consequently, Skittles became the “talk of the town” among social networking pundits over the last several days. The range of opinion on the matter ranged from “brilliant” to “profoundly stupid.”

Unfortunately, due to some profanity, other sensitive issues and perhaps just the “heat in the kitchen,” this big experiment only lasted a few days before Skittles moderated their approach. The story is highlighted in this Business Week story that posted yesterday. You can still find the social media feeds, but it takes more searching on the Skittles website to view this content. It isn’t exactly an about face, but it is no longer quite in your face.

Brand managers continue to be intrigued by social media, but most are still wary of the “wild west” nature of this communications medium. Most of today’s marketing execs sharpened their teeth on marketing options that allowed a high degree of message and placement control. With social media, there is very little of either, and that makes many marketers leery of this new frontier. Still, social media is a huge portion of how people communicate today, and it can have an indelible effect on brand equity. Just because a company doesn’t broadcast the conversation or participate in the social media channels, doesn’t make these conversations about companies, products or brands go away. CMOs, brand managers and marketers are going to have to learn how to integrate into this new reality.

Every day the locus of control in marketing is shifting more and more to the consumer. Marketers who hope for the “old days” when marketing was mostly top-down and internally driven are playing a losing game. If you believe the old adage that there is “no such thing as bad publicity” then the Skittles experiment shouldn’t be detrimental to their brand. However, for most companies, the exploration of the social media frontier will probably involve a more cautious and measured approach. There is little doubt that the communication changes facilitated by social networks are becoming profound and permanent. Keep that in mind if you choose to ignore the consequences of these changes for your company’s present and future communications efforts.