Skittles: Everything a campaign shouldn't be

In the right hands, social media has enormous potential to create brand awareness, sales, and brand evangelists. In the wrong hands, oy vey!

Today, those clueless wonders at Agency.com created quite a stir by turning the Skittles homepage into Twitter search results about Skittles (increasingly unfavorable by the way). Along the way they forgot that Skittles is a freaking candy. Something you eat, for fun.

Agency.com ripped off Modernista, whose recent campaign was so avant garde that I have no idea what they do. There also are three lame videos on YouTube that have nothing to do with why you should eat Skittles.

You know who Agency.com is: they're famous for a video in which they made fools of themselves while pitching Subway.

Then they launched a campaign for British Airways featuring a transvestite flight attendant who throws tomato juice on a passenger.

Noting that Agency.com ripped off Modernista, Adrants calls the campaign "ballsy!" But the only thing that's cool about this campaign is the cash that was spent on it.

Bonus Links:
Skittles: The worst thing to ever happen to social media branding.

(I was just trying to post this as a comment on one of the many sites praising this campaign for being brave and groundbreaking, and then the site stopped responding so I'll post here, on right-minded turf :)

Brave or just plain dumb? The two are often confused, and not mutually exclusive. Just because they tried this doesn't make it any good. This is the kind of circus act that bemuses social media noob clients with traffic and press but falls short in strategy, execution, and especially the potential of the medium, the same way a child's finger-painting will never be confused with even mediocre art, much less anything that makes a true contribution.

Right on, BL.

There is an enormous chasm that separates the insular cocoon of Twitterati marketers and wannabes -- and the world of consumers in general.

Unfortunately this distinction is often lost.

Case in point - the Skittles campaign. Sure it's creating a lot of buzz -- among the people who build buzz for a living. For everyone else? Not so much.

I'm not an anthropologist and perhaps I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd be willing to wager that children add up to a huge segment of the Skittles market.

The new Skittles website bans kids entirely. It doesn't even send them to a "safe" page, it just tells them to go away.

How can this possibly be viewed as either smart or effective marketing?

Wow Tim, you are right! They don't even have a page for kids. But truly, I have never actually seen anyone buy or eat them.

Why are Skittles bombing out these days. The were a great brand, smart advertisers and trendy.