Grown Up Thinking

Few things in the 2.0 era have received so much buzz so quickly as Skittle’s recent social media effort. I logged on to Twitter yesterday to a literal hashstorm of all things Skittles. I realize people get excited about candy, but this was ridiculous. What was going on? Obviously I did what any responsible digital marketing  professional would do–I went to Skittles.com.

Something wasn’t right–why did Skittles.com take me to Twitter’s search page with a little branded overlay on the top left?  Where’s the flashed out, high res animated page loader? Where’s the ambiguously organized homepage with different content engagement opportunities?  All I could see were different users’ tweets about Skittles. I clicked around the overlay, and was taken to….Facebook? This was something entirely new.

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HBO’s new hit show True Blood, a show about vampires, just got renewed for a second season. The show was no doubt spurred by an innovative marketing campaign that took a lot of chances and is now reaping the rewards. Rather than a traditional approach of plastering showtimes and trailers in attempt to broadly reach as many potential viewers as possible, True Blood chose to focus on creating deeper engagements built around intrigue and buzz.

And what better subject to create an illusion of mystery around but vampires? HBO created a fake blood based beverage, vampire dating site and vampire blog all of which have a surreal feel causing the viewer to at least pause and think and most likely discuss with friends. Just as Vampires infiltrate and integrate with human lives, True Blood infiltrated the crowded consumer consciousness and is now likely integrated in many viewers’ lives.

It’s no surprise that the online and offline worlds keeps merging into each more and more as technology enables us to keep connected at all times (especially here in the Mr. Youth office as admitted brand-lovers and tech geeks who gleefully exchange iPhone apps).

While the economy plummets and looming tension builds to keep everyone in the meatspace all a-twitch, the offline universe is evolving and adapting to reflect a space that is still thriving and positively teeming with great ideas: the online world. This month’s TrendWatching report focuses on the online/offline cross pollination that seeds offline content with a digital approach.

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