Grapevine Consulting

The marketing community is full of praise for Skittles’ Social Media campaign. The company has handed over Skittles.com to UGC communities and are seeing what happens.

Sound risky? Well as Econsultancy’s Chris Lake suggested

“It appears to be an extension of the old adage about there being no such thing as bad PR.”

While right now most people seem to be generating warm fuzzy feelings around the brand it could all go horribly wrong. I asked one of my clients, moderation specialists Tempero, for their thoughts and received a perhaps surprising response suggesting more companies should look at putting their brands into the hands of consumers – in moderation of course.

Read after the jump to see what MD, Dominic Sparkes, had to say.

Skittles have taken a fantastically bold approach with their latest campaign and whilst some commentators will consider it little more than a linking to the social net exercise, it actually highlights an approach that many are afraid to take.

Putting your brand message into the hands of customers is always a brave move, even when you have total control of the content.

For the Skittles campaign, they have taken the decision to let the users run wild and post what they like within branded environments on Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and more. Despite being a refreshingly open policy, this unmoderated approach could backfire should negative opinion gather momentum and those wishing to cause disruption have their merry way. Even simple usernames can cause offense and having the user “F**K****” (edited for privacy and decency!) commenting on your campaign would be a step too far for many brand managers.

An additional aspect is the potentially inappropriate nature of the content for children and sensitive users. Some would argue Skittles have a duty of care to protect their customers from reading profane or offensive content. On the other hand, they may be targeting an edgier audience in which case, over sanitising the content would negate the point.

Aside from the moderation worries, hats off to Skittles for using the existing social sphere and not taking the often misguided approach of thinking you should create your own social network. I honestly wish them all the best (and we’d be happy to moderate it all!).

To find out more about tempero visit www.tempero.co.uk