Tag Archives: Branding

by Michelle Lentz

The hot topic on the Interwebs today is Skittles. Go to Skittles.com and you’ll discover that they’ve relinquished control of their web site.

There is a navigation tool that floats and lets you navigate between Chatter, Products, Friends, and more. But each of those goes somewhere interesting: Chatter goes to the Twitter Search page for Skittles (which is also the Skittles.com home page), Products takes you to Wikipedia, and Friends takes you to Facebook. In fact, it seems that only Contact Us takes you to an actual Skittles hosted page.

I’ve read different takes on this all day. I’ve seen people screaming that the economy isn’t that bad and why can’t they hire a web designer. I’ve seen others celebrate the rather, um, ballsy take on a web site. I think I fall somewhere near the middle, leaning more towards ballsy than cheap. I feel like Skittles, in relinquisihing control, has admitted that all of us folks out here on the Web actually have a clue. They’ve taken listening to the consumer to a whole new level. However, I think there needs to be a little more integration of product in there. I suppose you can get that from the Facebook Fan page, with the apps and such, but really – if I’m going to the Skittles web site, I want more information on Skittles (more branding, perhaps) from the company in conjunction with user-generated content.

This type of approach to a web site may fall into the “all publicity is good publicity” category. It seems to have moved past that, but earlier today, the Skittles twitter search was showing some rather crude comments with #Skittles in the text. It currently is showcasing people talking about the web site and or those who are using the Hash Tag for the fun of showing up on the front page. No one is really chatting about the candy. The Wikipedia page focuses on types of flavors, but doesn’t tell you anything really useful about the product. The Facebook Fan page is fun, but again, not useful in a “learn more about the product” kind of way.

The point has been made, repeatedly, that ad agency Modernista did this about a year ago. According to AdAdge.com, however, Skittles is the first consumer product to give this a try. Another quote in that AdAge article struck my fancy (emphasis mine):

An Agency.com spokeswoman said that “Skittles as a brand is all about embracing and empowering the conversation online — just look at the YouTube entries and their Facebook page. Its kind of a natural evolution for them moving in to something like this.”

Now, is that how you think of Skittles? When I think of Skittles, I think of candy that is chewy and turns my tongue colors.   I like Skittles’ approach, but I wonder, would it be more effective if they scaled it back a little and still retained of bit of their own content?

What are your thoughts on the new Skittles site?

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Blogs: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

Technology is making it easier to be a fan of your favorite rock star. Not only are there a myriad of music listening web apps out there, but there’s MySpace Music. Now, you can take your fandom to your iPhone.

Interscope Geffen A&M is launching iPhone applications for five of its artists, through a partnership with mobile firm Kyte. The five are Lady Gaga, the Pussycat Dolls, Soulja Boy, the All American Rejects, and Keri Hilson. The free apps include video content, branding, and advertising, click-through links to buy music and merchandise, RSSto pull in news updates, and chat, comments and sharing.

According to Ted Mico, executive VP of digital for Interscope Geffen A&M, “Kyte allows us to easily deliver iPhone and iPod touch apps that connect our artists with their fans in a fully immersive, interactive experience.”  The apps go live in the app store today.

by Michelle Lentz

Today Twitter announced (per the Twitter blog) that they are testing an improved search and trends feature. Twitter is rolling out access to a more integrated use of search from their Twitter page to selected users (beta testers, if you will).

Search.twitter.com has apparently been getting more and more popular (as I’m sure you knew, just as a user) in spite of its subdomain location. With the beta users, the Twitter Powers That Be hope to get a better sense of how people are using it. Once they get a better understanding, it’ll be all systems go for the rest of us. I say kudos to Twitter for taking this slow instead of jumping in headfirst.

The new trending function looks really nifty, with the ability to view a drop-down of the most popular topics on Twitter at any given moment in real time.

Adding both trends and easy access to search will make a huge difference for people using Twitter. With Search hidden, I bet a lot of casual users – and companies – are unaware of the power of brand and topic search in real time. It will soon be incredibly easy to follow what people are saying about your brand on Twitter, without ever leaving your Twitter page.

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel, Blogs: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

Nominee for City Beat’s Best of the City: Vote for My Wine Education under Public Eye > Blog:
http://www.bestofcincinnati.com/

by Brian Solis

New services launch seemingly every day. Where do you need to be? How can you be everywhere at once? As with all social communities, we will go where our friends, peers, and professional contacts congregate and communicate with each other.  But until we get around to creating an account in each network, which to date has proved to be an elusive process, how do we beat others who may wish to use the same username or those cybersquatters who horde brand names as ransome?

In the era of the socialized Web, brand and reputation management is now integrated as systematic process in our daily routine. We ARE responsible for our personal brand as well as the corporate brand we represent. Securing that online brand and investing in and cultivating an impeccable and influential reputation is critical to establishing and maintaining a consistent, strategic, and complementary presence from network to network.

Lucky for us, there is a helpful dashboard now available for to streamline the process of obtaining and creating online identities.

UserNameCheck cross references every major social network for the availability of your desired username. The results are displayed in one master dashboard, providing you with the ability to determine which networks require your attention and also a direct link to secure the username.

For more on the subject of personal, professional and corporate branding and reputation management, please read “In the Social Web, We Are All Brand Managers” over at PR 2.0.

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, Jaiku or Facebook

By Nicole Jordan

This article has been brewing in my mind for five years but it just kind of sat there, not taking shape, only growing larger in substance. Two blog posts this week have kicked my ass in to gear to finally get initial thoughts down on (e)paper.

Steve Rubel, prominent blogger and, dare I say, PR person, started it off with this. Then Arrington followed up with this.

Both completely reinforce what I’ve long believed:

PR has a branding crisis.