The Skittles buzz

Very interesting use of social networking by Skittles is all the buzz today. If you login to your Facebook account and then go to Skittles.com, you’ll find yourself back at FB but with a floating Skittles box on your page and everywhere else you go in FB. It’s a bit of a stalker experience… not sure I like it. The floating box has links to a Skittles Twitter page and YouTube page. The Twitter presence seemed pretty confusing to me, since it seemed to be a lot of chatter by marketers about whether or not this would help Skittles.

The question to me is, a week from now, when the buzz has died, will any of this have made a difference in Skittles sales? Or are they just working from the old adage of “any buzz is good buzz?” Advertising Age has this article that seems to give the promotion kudos, but in today’s economy, I question a tactic like this. My customers want to see a real return on their ad spend. Do you think Skittles will see an increase in sales because of this campaign? If you’re not a Skittles fan, will this change your mind? For me, the answer is not really. It’s interesting as a concept but, sorry, I don’t like Skittles. This won’t make me buy them and it isn’t so interesting that I’ll come back and check the site a second time.

I understand that they want people to “interact with the brand” but will that translate to sales? Isn’t that what advertising is supposed to do?