Skittles Savant

WARNING: I feel like I may soon experience hyperglycemic shock due to an excessive consumption of Crazy Core Skittles today. Therefore, I apologize in advance for the hyperactive nature of this post.

Now that you’ve received fair warning, I am INFATUATED with Skittles.

I get absolutely giddy when delicately bursting into a package of fruity goodness. The colors, the aroma, the texture, the taste. I am overwhelmed by the aesthetically pleasing and appetizing treat! My roommates enjoy making fun of my childish exuberance for the hard, sugar-shelled candy, but I just can’t contain my excitement.

Imagine my reaction when I discovered the content-rich, eccentric Skittles.com. Holy double rainbow—authentic, engaging content created by one of my favorite brands.  I immediately fell into an interactive marketing-induced euphoria.

Once revived from my intense state of transcendent happiness, I explored the rainbow-themed site. Staying true to its friendly, quirky self, the Skittles’ brand invited me to “Taste the rainbow” by scrolling down. The site eschews typical navigation in favor of a single, endless website—similar to a rainbow.

As I explored, I found content ranging from an offbeat YouTube video to a picture of a clown in an astronaut suit. All the content can be shared through Facebook and Twitter. One of my favorite posts, “Sometimes I think peninsulas are just islands that aren’t trying hard enough” received 15,131 Facebook “likes” and generated 902 comments.

These stellar stats are a common occurrence for the site. A status stating, “Wouldn’t it be great if elevators replaced all their buttons with a single Surprise Me button?” garnered 16, 294 “likes” and 1,338 comments.

As my sugar coma approaches, I’ll conclude with a final, exclamatory thought: Bravo Big Spaceship for creating an interactive, innovative site that remains loyal to the brand’s essence. 

Online Relationship Overload

Monitoring the social media sphere this week, I noticed that love is in the air. In particular, these two virtual, relationship-related articles grabbed my attention:

•  Active Twitter Users have Shorter Relationships
• Facebook to Ad Agencies: Let’s Be ‘In a Relationship’

Okay, I’ll admit that one of the articles has a more substantial impact on the advertising industry, but what about those social media-ites searching for love?

photo credit: Likeable Media

Well, according to stats published by the dating site OkCupid, the romantic relationship of active Twitter users doesn’t last as long as the rest of the population. OkCupid’s study found this revealing gem:

• People who use Twitter everyday tend to have shorter relationships and the problem worsens with age.
  • According to its analysis of 833,987 OkCupid users, the average relationship for an 18-year-old who uses Twitter is about nine months while “everybody else” usually has a relationship of nine-and-a-half months. At the age of 50, a frequent tweeter’s relationship lasts 15 months while the non-frequent tweeter stays in a relationship for approximately 17 months.

What about Facebook’s recent relationship development? Well, the rumors are true. On Monday, the social network asked its creative partners to be in a committed relationship.

Facebook launched a stand-alone community site where ad agency creatives can share ideas, comment on campaigns and learn what it takes to create a successful page for a brand. The community, called “Facebook Studio,” is a platform aimed at agencies, PR firms and media strategy companies.

photo credit: Facebook Studio

Facebook executives say this move is the first step in a creating a dialogue between Facebook and the ad world. Until now, Facebook has let ad mavens navigate the social network’s frequent changes alone.

By making this first move, Facebook obviously still wears the pants in this relationship, but it may only be a matter of time before power shifts?

We’ll have to wait and see if Facebook stays faithful. I’d hate for the broken heart and status “Facebook is single” to appear on my newsfeed.

BU Senior attends AdAge’s 2011 Digital Conference #winning

Last week, Advertising major Benji Michaels (COM ’11) attended AdAge’s 2011 Digital Conference. I had the opportunity to get an exclusive interview with the soon-to-be grad. He shared with me his experience at the event and the insights gained.

Benji with his Google water bottle, a free goodie from the conference

How did you end up winning tickets to AdAge’s Digital Conference?

They ran a contest on Twitter, and you had to submit a question to one of the panelist who would be at the conference. I happened to be on Twitter at the right time. So, I wrote one and they picked it.

#winning tweets

So, tell me a little bit about the conference.

It’s a conference that brings together advertisers and marketers to talk about innovations, trends, insights in the digital space. It’s in its 6^th year, I think. It was in NYC in a place called New World Stages at 50^th and 9^th. It was two nights—Wednesday and Thursday (April 6th-7th). Wednesday night, AdAge hosted a viral video awards show. The event awarded different campaigns or viral videos. I even met the BlendTec guy!

What sessions did you attend?

I went to everything I could. They had a few couple different tracks: social-based, video based or mobile based.  The founder of foursquare, Dennis Crowley, spoke. The founders of Boxee were also there. They talked about cutting the cord with interactive TV and personal, customized set-top boxes like an Apple or Google TV. I basically went to one presentation after the other:

Were there any other students at the conference?

Not that I knew of. It was an older crowd than expected. The CEOs were the youngest people there. Chris Hughes, the co-founder of Facebook, attended the conference. Also, the guy who invented the bump technologies was super young. There wasn’t as much networking as I had hoped, but it was totally worth it because of the content of the presentations.

How can you apply the insights learned in the presentation to your internship or your own brand?

The stuff people talk about is close to common sense. We are the first generation to inherently understand these platforms and technologies. All these people are learning how companies have been successful using Twitter, Facebook,  and Apps. But, these are things we know. We are the generation that has defined how Facebook and twitter are used.

The insights weren’t huge revelations. We take for granted how much we know about these things. There’s a gap between understanding how things work and relevant insights and strategies to apply. So, it takes savvy and experience to understand why a trending hash tag works as opposed to other marketing collateral.

Based on the information you learned at the conference, what is your advice for your peers?

We all use this stuff, but very few people know it as well as we do. Take your daily Facebook usage and make something of it. Stay trending on pop culture because so much of what drives strategy is culture and collective consciousness of society. No one is more tapped into it than we are.

Gleeks and Tweets

To all my fellow Gleeks and Twitter fanatics, this post goes out to you.

Now for the obvious question following my attempt at a Kanye West-esque shout out: What do a popular sitcom and a social networking site have in common?

Simple answer: the characters.

Twitter is similar to the hallways of Glee’s William McKinley High School.  Each Glee character represents a certain type of tweeter:

Brittany Pierce

• the social butterfly who @ replies to everyone

Sue Sylvester

• the outspoken, self-proclaimed personal therapist who always shares his or her opinion of your situation

Will Schuester

• the “professor type” who provides useful links and retweets

Noah Puckerman and Santana Lopez

• the bully who is searching for a twight (twitter fight)

Rachel Berry

• the self-absorbed egoist who tweets their own horn day and night

Mike Chang

• The shy listener that follows everyone but rarely tweets

Principal Figgins

• the authoritative figure who roams the twittersphere (aka a brand’s community manager)

While each of these characters has a distinct personality, they have a commonality– Glee club. Glee is their community. Similarly, you may  follow a diverse set of people and have an eclectic following. They are your community.

Each relationship serves a different need. The Brittany Pierce in your twittersphere proves a good conversationalist while the Will Schuester provides useful links to keep you informed on the latest news.

To your community, which Glee character are you?