We all know today’s conversations take place online. Here, we look at how 2 very different brands are using contrasting approaches to build momentum.

Confectionary brand, Skittles, may score points for its brave integration with social media, but its latest campaign also highlights how being brave isn’t always easy.

To market its new range, ‘Crazy Cores’, skittles.com uses a light-hearted, fun approach to embrace independent conversations about its brand.

Visitors to skittles.com can see other people’s feelings towards the brand and even contribute should they feel like it. As you work through the official site’s pages, you are led to a number of different social media platforms - Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia or Facebook.

Brave? Yes, very. But at the end of the day Skittles has now taken back some control after the campaign stimulated some out-of-hand content, namely crude and pornographic material. To combat this, Skittles now redirects traffic only to sites it trusts is being managed to some extent, like Facebook.
Skittles is achieving a couple of things here. It’s demonstrating to people it understands they want to interact in a social environment that’s more objective than its official brand site. It’s also bravely encouraging all opinions, while choosing to sit alongside them.

Embracing people’s opinion is also on the agenda for the NRMA.

When the 2008 Mini Budget results mentioned no initiatives to improve Australia’s roads, the NRMA decided to provide a platform for people to voice their opinions, with the aim to drive change.

Roadtube.com.au enables people to share what irritates them about the roads.

Look at this example above from Stephen Wright, who attached a camera to the dashboard of his truck and filmed some of the local roads in his village of Dungog in the Hunter Valley. The NRMA is now supporting Stephen by working with the local council, who is in turn lobbying the Federal Government for change.

“NRMA is the white knight here, giving a voice to the voiceless and uniting lone whingers into a vast grumbling army”. Helen Barnes, Research Analyst, Mitchell Communication Group.

An army indeed, let’s hope change is in the making!

Thanks to: Skittles, NRMA – roadtube.com.au, Stephen Wright