ErinIs.com

A week ago Skittles relaunched their website and it looked strangely familiar…reminiscent of Modernista’s unwebsite, Skittles.com’s site is merely a redirect to social networks, Wikpedia, YouTube and a couple of static pages. 

Initially, the Skittles homepage was pointed at the results page for a ”skittles” twitter search but within a couple of hours there were hundreds of inappropriate tweets making onto the results page. Hilarious for those of us with a juvenile sense of humor, but probably not what Skittles had intended. They have since redirected the homepage to their Wikipedia entry, but those twitter search results are still the redirect for the “chatter” section of the site. 

There was no clear consensus within my Twitter friends if it was genius or a lame attempt to jump on the bandwagon. I can’t understand why would they attempt to feed off of a social network without someone who was actively twittering as the face of the brand? Unless of course Skittles the Cat (@skittles) is the mastermind behind the candy. 

While I applaud the attempt to “go social” and I love the idea of the unwebsite, I really don’t think that it fits with the brand of the product. Once all the attention dies down from the new site, how is the unwebsite going to further the brand, continue to build awareness or make me want some Skittles? Just because the unwebsite is a great idea, doesn’t mean its a great idea for the brand. 

You can read some great posts on the Skittles redesign here, here and here. 

Now if I could have had a hand in this site redo, I would have taken a look around the internets to see what people were already saying about the brand. Check out what I learned about Skittles in 5 minutes. Starting with my first two Google searchs (auto completes say a lot!):

Read more »

Just signed up for a new social media site to test out. Best warning posted on the sign up page. 

“Any messages involving Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Russia and wiring money, online escrow services, western union, or cashiers checks are definitely scams and should be ignored. Do not be fooled no matter how convincing the story is or how beautiful their photos may be.”

I would say that this was totally uncalled for because these scams are not new, but then I read this on Digg.

If I were to ever run some sort of internet scamming business I would spend any available funds on a copywriter and a translator.

I posted a $150,000 special edition Mustang on behalf of a client and this is just one of many money laundering email scams I’ve received. On slow days I reply to their emails and see just how riled up I can get them…does anyone believe these things?

Here is the actual email in response to the listing:

From: faithy cole [faithysmart005@yahoo.com]

To: Erin