David Berkowitz has a terrific post at MediaPost about why Skittles has removed its own content from its Web site and is instead featuring the Wikipedia page about Skittles, a page that aggregates Skittles-mentioning tweets, and its Facebook page. David writes:

Here’s the message Skittles is sending: What consumers say about the brand is more important than what the brand has to say to consumers.

…

By just about any rational indication, Skittles went too far. Highlighting Twitter Search in particular seems absurd, especially since Twitter tends to skew older relative to other social media properties, and Skittles seems to target a younger audience. I came home and showed Skittles.com to my wife. Her first reaction, before I even told her why I was showing it to her, was, “That’s it?” Then she added, “What happens if you don’t care about Twitter or don’t know about Twitter? It seems like it’s only for people who are really technical. I just wouldn’t care.”

But why would anyone care about what Skittles has to say? What, pray tell, could Skittles ever say that was so important, unless we woke up one day to find out that eating Skittles is the world’s tastiest cancer cure, or alternatively that Skittles lower men’s sperm count. Then, perhaps, the world will listen.

It goes on from there. And I say: OMG, I actually went to — and enjoyed! — Skittles.com. Awesome!

[Tags: skittles twitter marketing cluetrain ]

Categories: Uncategorized dw