This is the fourth in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.

The transparency and accountability of brands is increasing as new uses of the Internet drive the democratization of voice — shifting knowledge and control from marketers to consumers. This trend is forcing marketers to adopt non-traditional methods of brand management to ensure the brand is consistent not only in communications but through all customer touch points. As one CMO put it, “everything we do communicates.”

If you believe that the true definition of a brand lies with the perceptions of consumers not with the marketing leaders, then the extreme brand management practice would be for consumers to drive the expression of the brand. Well maybe not, but this is exactly what the maker of Skittles has done (knowingly or unknowingly).

In March, Skittles re-launched their website, which used social media tools for content: Twitter for “Chatter”, Facebook for “Friends”, Wikipedia for “product information” and YouTube for “Media”. This was heralded by some and refuted as a circus trick by others (see a previous post for my take).  Unfortunately, I have not been able to find information on the performance of the campaign.

This example, whether good or bad, does provide a new theory for brand managers and bring to reality the old phrase “a brand is what others say about you, not what you say about yourself.” How will you begin to renew your brand management practices to align with consumer voice?

Mirror post at alanhart.wordpress.com

I wonder if the execs at Mars Snackfoods woke up with a hangover this morning.  No doubt they were up late last night, either celebrating a bit of genius or wondering what they allowed to happen yesterday at Skittles.

If you haven’t been to the new skittles.com, you have to see it for yourself.  Instead of a traditional site with information created by the company, Skittles.com aggregates content from consumer-generated sites across the web – Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc.  You navigate to the various sites through a widget-like box that floats on the page.

Like the site or not, everyone was talking about the new Skittles.com yesterday.  Twitter was chirping with mentions of Skittles and you can be certain the blogs were buzzing (see stats below as published in the Wall Street Journal).  It became clear early on that two camps were forming – one heralding Skittle’s move as “groundbreaking” and the other calling it “the worst thing to ever happen to social media branding”.

My opinion?  The success or stupidity of Skittles move depends on what their end game is.  There is no denying that this marketing stunt got the attention of a lot of people. But the attention came largely from the social media elite, not from Skittles core customers.  As soon as this buzz dies out, they will likely forget about the Skittles brand as quickly as they were attracted to it.

If Skittles was looking for a PR stunt to drive short term traffic, they found a winner.  If this was meant to kick off a long-term marketing campaign, I think Skittles was way off the mark.  Blogger Ceonyc got it right when he said “If it’s just about the “numbers” than that’s something, but anyone can get numbers up. It doesn’t mean they made people care about the brand and if they didn’t do that, then they failed.”

Join the conversation and let us know what you think.  One colleague has already done so on his blog.