In a bold move to spark some word of mouth, Skittles has changed its entire website and turned it into a social media extravaganza. Yesterday the Skittles home page was their Twitter stream, and today the home page is now their Facebook Fan page. They appear to be rotating through all of the social media outlets.

To get to different areas of their site you’re now presented with the hovering navigation box. For instance, now when you click on “Media” you’re taken to their You Tube and Flickr pages. Gutsy move especially if they don’t always monitor these highly trafficked pages.

They do present visitors with a screen that asks their age and tells the visitor that there might be content not suitable for kids.

If anyone Tweets the word Skittles it will appear on the Skittles site in the Twitter stream.

In an interview with AdWeek, Carole Walker, VP, integrated marketing communications for the brand, had this to say, “Skittles’ brand positioning was a border zone . . . Skittles lives in a world that is unexpected.”

Seems like instead of pushing marketing messages out to their consumers, they’re letting consumers do it on their behalf.

Bold or crazy? I don’t know. But I did see on their Facebook page they have 585,000 fans and growing, they’ve got 1,500 wall posts of people talking about Skittles, they have 16,000 pictures that match the criteria “skittles” on Flickr and countless Tweets by the minute. They are targeting their exact market with the tools that this market lives and dies by. Seems like they may have tasted the rainbow on this one but you tell me!

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