The recent furore surrounding the relaunch of the Skittles website is a good example - it’s either a disastrous attempt to tap into the latest media trends, or a masterful example of the theory that ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’.
For those who missed it, Skittles in the US decided to replace its website at skittles.com with a live Twitter feed. Any Twitter posting - or tweet, as users insist on calling them - that mentioned the word ‘Skittles’ appeared on the feed, and so appeared on the Skittles site.
Great idea - except for one tiny detail. There were no controls on what sort of tweets would end up on the feed; all very web 2.0, but also a disaster waiting to happen. One vital rule of playing around with the internet is never to overestimate the moral calibre of your audience. In this case it wasn’t long before the feed was flooded with swearwords, racist comments and, most embarrassingly, propaganda from Scientologists.
The experiment was roundly panned by the social media marketing community. But they may well be missing the point. The brand has secured huge amounts of publicity for a site that can’t have cost much to build - its click rate must have gone through the roof. In these tough times, that represents value for money. And the interest generated may help Skittles in the long term nurture a community of customers.
The fact that Skittles was so open to playing around with its main website is interesting, and may well be a trend we see here in Asia - though almost certainly with less controversial results. Media’s Marketers Poll, results of which are published this issue, shows that when it comes to digital spend, Asian brands are most likely to raise their budgets to invest in their own websites. Largely they are holding back on investment in online video or social networking - all the exciting yet unproven new channels - and instead are beefing up their own online real estate.
There are plenty of reasons for this ‘back to basics’ trend. Many brands still have pretty poor websites, and realise that the web is becoming a key shop window. For many, the web is opening up as a sales channel and so the site will become a new revenue driver.
Even for brands that do not sell online, there may be long-term cost savings in moving customer service online and out of call centres that need to be staffed, or from building cutomer databases out of their online audience.
It’s a sign that brands are beginning to realise they can become media owners in their own right. And, if they’re lucky, they may even attract the attention of a few Scientologists.
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