"Social Media Watchers Are Becoming Their Own Cliche"

This week's ad industry buzz about the Skittles.com foray into social media made me curious. I went to the site and low and behold, 2 of the 6 featured pix of "Skittle friends" were actually 2 of my FaceBook friends. It made me wonder, is there a secret algorithim that matched my FBook to Skittles FBook? My social network expert said, "not likely."

It just seems so improbable! Two of my friends pictured out of 600,000+ registered fans just when I choose to visit? These friends happen to be ad folk, which made me think: Are ad people, as social media watchers and chasers of all things cool, actually heightening Skittles' buzz? Then it hit me--ad agency folk have become the "chattering class" of social media. We are not only watchers, but participants and pushers. We are our own target.


Have we become our own cliche? That's the provocative question from the socialmediainsider @ Mediapost.com. In the write-up, "Hey Who Stole My Twittles? I Mean Skittles?" the author concludes that the chatter has been less about Skittles brand, and more about what their campaign signals for the future of social media. Did the client and agency team recognize that the chattering class of ad people could be relied on to "push" the buzz out to the non-ad world? Just how many ad folk are on FBook and Twitter anyway? (me thinks, a great percent).

So is the Skittles "spider" going to pick-up the conversation from this blog and add it to the evidence of buzz created? Today, you can call me "pusher."