Rainbow of flavor finds social media pot of gold

There are many ways to effectively incorporate social media into your company’s marketing communications mix.  A Facebook page here.  A Twitter account there.  But up until now, most businesses have taken an incremental approach.

And then there’s Skittles.  

The venerable candy maker recently announced its new corporate website–in so much as it can even be called a corporate website.  It’s more of a patchwork of social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.  

In turn, Skittles has become one of the first major consumer brands to cede most of the conversation about its product to consumers.  Basically, Skittles has given the masses free reign to praise or “destroy” the brand according to one Tweet.

Wise move?

Time will tell.  

The company already has had to make some adjustments.  A deluge of offensive Tweets quickly persuaded Skittles management to switch the landing page from a Twitter Search page to a more manageable Facebook page, as reported today by Mashable.com.   However, Skittles still maintains a “chatter” tab for easy linking to the Twitter Search page, bad Skittles jokes and all.  Surely, Skittles will keep tinkering as it adjusts and siezes opportunities in the evolving social media landscape.

In the meantime, almost 600,000 new Facebook fans and counting seems like a sweet bet for Skittles’ colorful marketing experiment.

By Brock Foreman