25 Feb Skittles: Facebook Fan Page Example in Detail #4
Continuing the trend of Lisa’s 26 Facebook Fan Page Examples in Details brings us to #4: Skittles. The Skittles page has an amazing 15 million fans and counting. This page baffles me as it probably baffles other people – you’ll see why if you scroll down and take the time to read their wall posts. Yet they utilize the element of weirdness and surprise to keep their fans entertained and engaged. Seeing if they can translate it all into brand loyalty into more actionable activities, however, has been an interesting experiment lately.
Skittles Default Landing Tab: Promotion
As a non-fan, going to the Skittles Facebook page leads to a teaser page with the amusingly passive aggressive taunt: “We see you peeking. Like us and this contest is all yours.” If you fall for it like I did, the main tab reveals a promotion to “Win the rainbow” – in this instance, a full-size vending machine with Skittles Blenders.
The lure to interact with the promotion was the ability to submit directly from the landing page what you would be willing to do to win the machine and then vote on favorites. The tab is still very upfront and explanatory, as well as very aesthetically pleasing. I can’t help but think of how awesome that vending machine looks (and how awesome it would look here if we had one too). Considering the craziness of Skittles campaigns, this promotion fits right along, especially in a Klondike-bar-esque “what would you do for it” approach to gathering consumer generated content.
The promotion is over now and the winner has been announced along with a teaser line, “Who knows what the rainbow will do next…”
Additional Tabs: Mob the Rainbow
One of Skittles’ more prominent tabs has been their Mob the Rainbow tab, previously a default tab for the page. Recently featured by Mashable, the tab (developed by EVB) is a program that has mobilized Skittles fans to do crazily random activities. As much as Skittles seems to be an off-the-wall, anti-conformist brand, it definitely knows how to utilize mob mentality. The first event featured on the tab asked the Mob (fans of the page) to flood an unsuspecting parking enforcement officer with Valentines. Consistently appealing to the random-acts-of-kindness line of thinking, the next request of the Mob helped create a Skittles Giving Tree. The latest endeavor sent a student to bowling college. For the “Scholarship the Rainbow” to be a success, Skittles asked its fanbase for 100,000 Likes and in turn received 150,000, thus ensuring the $10,000 scholarship for James Fulp.
Skittles Facebook Content Strategy
While they appear to be tripping out with a lot of their content, it clearly connects: their engagement rates are ridiculously high for the most random comments. There’s no direct responses on the page, however – they post comments but don’t respond to others that post on the wall. There does seem to be censoring since there is minimal cursing on the wall. Spammers are also absent from the page suggesting active page management.
I mean, what is this? Besides wildly effective?
Seriously? 22,000 people saw this and felt the desire to press the “Like” button for it?
On the flip side, however, once they recently began to try to reach out and put up wordier posts to utilize their fans – engagement rates began plummeting. Recent posts with over 30 words each have only hit around 4k to 5k likes and a few hundred comments, whereas the norm is usually for Skittles posts (normally under 10 words each) to get 10k likes and several hundreds or even thousands of comments in response. Check the tables below to see how Skittles compares with Oreo, but more importantly – how Skittles compares with their previous rates before they started pushing posts promoting the vending machine campaign.
When I think of Skittles, I still think of the terrifying but memorable singing rabbit. Or the creepy long beard. To me, those still epitomize the brand, even after years of feeling morbidly fascinated/totally creeped out by their marketing campaigns. They’ve definitely succeeded at establishing their eccentric brand image and portraying it across Facebook, at the very least.
