Visitors to Skittles.comare invited to “Interweb the rainbow”, which basically means “see what’s going on in the world of Skittles all over the web”. You can see chatter on Twitter, photos and videos on Flickr and YouTube, and product information from Wikipedia. ”Isn’t this cool?” say social media people everywhere… well yes, it is. But why?

1. They don’t ask you to visit the factory
In Feb 2008, at  a Chinwag discussion on measuring social media, it became clear that deciding just what to measure was one of the biggest issues, and safe to say, that’s not changed. Danielle West, then at analytics firm Nedstat, highlighted the ability to track user engagement on a company’s homepage, whereas Will McInnes, one half of Nixon McInnes spoke much more about engagement, conversation and content.

Of course Nedstat is going to say that the aim of social media marketing is to drive traffic to your own website which you can analyse later, and it seems that every online campaign must have its own microsite these days. For brands selling to consumers, I find this a very strange mindset to have. From a sales point of view, a confectionery company shouldn’t care if you buy one of their products in a supermarket, a petrol station or in a vending machine, what matters is the purchase. It would be insane to suggest that you have to go to factory to buy the sweets. In a similar vein, Skittles is suggesting that they don’t care where you interact with the brand, they don’t care if you don’t visit Skittles.com – in fact, if you do, you won’t find much that you can’t find anywhere else on the web. What matters to them is that you engage with the brand somewhere.

The marketing goal of “driving traffic to our microsite” is equivalent to “getting people to the factory”. Which reminds me of the story of an elderly couple driving nearly 100 miles from Portsmouth to BBC Thames Valley Radio following an advert asking them to visit the BBC website. They thought it was an actual building. That’s a little off the point, but talks to a principle that Skittles is following: Don’t use social media to interrupt and usher people around the web. Brands engaging with internet users should bear in mind the fact that 99.9% of the time, we’re online to do something which isn’t look at your website. I think Skittles gets it and it’s this that makes its website a huge game changer for marketers who have seen website traffic as one of their key goals.

2. The decision has buy in from the top
This is more of a supposition than going off actual evidence, however, I think it’s safe to say that there’s no way that this would have got signed off without some serious muscle at Wrigley getting involved. There are a growing number of marketers who understand and embrace the fact that social media makes organisations pourous – with information being communicated to and from the entirety of the business, not just from a single, centrally controlled outlet. However, move closer to the centre of the business and that enthusiasm is generally not as prevalent.

The social web doesn’t just impact how organisations should communicate, it impacts how they do everything. HR - should know about and engage with employee Facebook groups, product development teams should be listening to demands and complaints from current users in all kinds of online forums, tech support should be monitoring twitter for any issues arising. Of course, some of these boxes are being ticked, but I can’t help but think that for the most part, this is a bottom up movement – driven by communications and customer service departments. While “Interweb the Rainbow” may have come from marketing, but there’s no doubt that sign-off came from the real business decision makers. It’s always been a marketers job to educate CEOs on why this is a good idea, and with Skittles being an example that would take most board members way outside of their comfort zones, this is a hard sell, but one that must be made.

3. They want you to listen to your peers
Sending visitors to other parts of the web is acknowleding the concept that “Your brand is what Google says about you.” It’s giving creedence to the fact that web users don’t just take your word as gospel. With millions of viewpoints and opinions just a simple search away, Skittles is bypassing that step by leading people straight to the opinion. Plenty of conversations and meetings this year have paid lip service to transparency, but surely this is the genuine article. There’s even a disclaimer on the front page which notes that there is external content available, over which, Skittles has no control. Gutsy, very gutsy, but a move that signifies a huge shift in direction and understanding for marketers everywhere.

…So after the hype and knee-jerk reactions have died down, Interweb the Rainbow is still running relatively smoothly. The site looks good and you get can navigate the pages in the same way that you’d navigate social media platforms normally. But it’s the principles behind the site that really make a difference and should have marketers sitting up in their seats, thinking about how it affects their brands.

Here’s a nice post from Dave Fleet making the case for social media being like long distance running. He claims that with social media, “you need to put in a lot of work up-front – making connections, getting involved in the online communities and helping others, with what can sometimes feel like very little reward. [...] the real rewards come later once you’ve done that initial work.”

I have to agree – in fact I recently commented on a Todd Defren post which looked at the question of ROI and what brands expect from investing in social media. The fact is that many a marketing director has heard about the potential of this brave new world, they know the hype and have seen success come to others. However, when it comes to turning around their own social media strategy, they still think in terms of reach, page impressions and KPIs.

I think this is perpetuated by so-called “full service” online agencies that are on the social media bandwagon to make a quick buck. This is the type of agency that chooses not to distinguish between organic engagement and paid-for viral distribution, which is essentially a form of advertising. With so many different flavours of agency out there, the bulk of the hard work is actually explaining to potential clients how we do it differently and how this is our own unique approach. Who can blame in-house marketing teams for thinking it’s a sprint with immediate return on investment when as an industry, social media marketing shirks the collaborative ethos that embodies that which we’re engaging with?

Social media is an endurance sport, and the sooner that the myth of overnight success is dispelled, the better things will be for all involved.