May 22nd, 2009
Nine worst social media fails of 2009... thus far
Skittles
Touted as genius by some social marketing pundits, the Skittles Twitter trick was a significant case study for a social media thud. The candy company turned its home page into a Twitter search feed for, you guessed it, Skittles. When the campaign first launched, the Skittles campaign was one of the hottest trending topics on Twitter. Social media bloggers (not this one) were exclaiming that Skittles “GETS IT!” but all they did was turn their home page into a constantly revolving loop of people saying “OMG SKITTLES LOVES TWITTER.” It almost seemed to be an ad campaign for Twitter versus one to enhance the Skittles brand. There was no real community outreach (it was incredibly passive) and it came to be pretty self-centered in the first weeks. However, Skittles broke one of the first cardinal rules of social media — it led with a tool and didn’t reach into its community. The Skittles home page is still its Twitter feed, however it’s slightly improved, only because no one cares about the stunt anymore. But it still isn’t engagement. And there’s no way to control the content. I could Twitter troll and say horrible things about Skittles all day long and feed into their Web presence. Fail, Skittles. Absolute fail.
Jennifer Leggio, aka "Mediaphyter," writes about the "social business" side of social media - including enterprise, security and reputation issues. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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