After the sensational Skittles campaign launched on Twitter by Mars this year, some revealing truths have emerged about social marketing that I have suspected for a long time.

It was mathematically impossible to avoid, we just had to wait for it to happen. There was one big ripple effect spawning a series of ripples. When the sensational Twitter fest occurred, we saw certain ripples that were positive about the brand and others that were negative.

It didn’t really matter – they just wanted to see how many ripples they could make. It’s like staging a train wreck. We know the outcome will be messy yet we are compelled to watch. Some folks seemed genuinely concerned about how others were reacting and judging the campaign. Who really cares how people are judging this? In fact, the people who talked about it the most were the people doing the judging. I believe the objective was all about talk and the buzz and they accepted the ripples good or bad.

Controversy has always sparked conversation dating back to the early days of PR. It has worked for celebrities and other brands offline in the past and this experiment was no different.
The big question that was raised at the end of all this was, “did it help them sell more candy?” I don’t believe that was the intention. Being the most talked about candy in the world and getting tons of free press with very little effort and relatively low-cost was clearly the goal here.

There was a method to this madness. I tend to believe that Mars, being a major a conglomerate, chose this brand deliberately knowing that the risk would be minimal. The argument was made that they missed their target altogether. Perhaps that too was deliberate. Damage control would be virtually a non-issue if their young customers were not so affected by any possible backlash or criticism.
The phenomenon of “brand surfing” or what is classically known as coat-tailing also emerged from this experiment.

This was more of a wave than a ripple as many Twitter influencers and wannabe influencers rode this wave for their own benefit and buzz. Yet again, this was a non-issue because they all became brand affiliates instantly, regardless of what was being said. This will happen again and again and I think it will work better for some brands than others. Whether this tactic will sell more products or not remains to be seen.