Brad Wellman
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

So I recently stumbled upon the PepsiCo Zeitgeist, which if you haven’t seen already, I suggest you check out.

At first I was unsure what exactly I was seeing; it looked like nothing more than a glorified Twitter stream. But as I watched a little closer, I realized that the Twitter user streams were being categorized into different topics centered on the SXSW event in Austin, Texas.

I thought this was pretty cool, but what I found really neat was the “swarm” tab. “Swarm” uses Google Maps technology (similar to a previous post I wrote about Google Latitude) to collect GPS locations of Twitter users to show location-based tweets at different restaurants around Austin.

A “zeitgeist” is “the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time,” and by definition I see why the PepsiCo site is titled the way it is. It really captures people’s real-time thoughts and feelings relating to events and places around SXSW.

However, besides the novelty of the site, how does this at all relate to PepsiCo? The site lacks any interactivity, as it simply shows a stream of visitors’ comments. Personally, I think a way to improve upon it would be to allow Twitter users to respond and interact with other Twitter users, by using the Zeitgeist as a type of forum.

We already saw something similar to this with Skittles, but the Skittles site focused on conversation surrounding the Skittles brand, whereas the Zeitgeist seems to have little to no relation to PepsiCo.

What are your thoughts about this? Is this the new wave in corporate branding?

Mike Rynchek
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

We are all fans of the rainbow colored candy Skittles but recently their website has taken on a bit of a different flavor. Check out www.Skittles.com and you will see that the site is now an overlay of their Twitter search page and various other social media sites. (Notably not MySpace…hmm…) Test it out, by tweeting about Skittles and watch it show up behind the site. Skittles didn’t stop there. If you click on “Images” you will be taken to their Flickr page. “Video”? Yup, redirected to the Skittles YouTube channel. Check out the “Friends” link, of course it links to Facebook. In my opinion, the most creative feature is that the product links connect you to their Wikipedia page.

So the question I pose to you Social Media fanatics and general consumers is this: “What do you think? Good idea/bad idea? Is this a cool concept that lacks function or a ground breaking new strategy that will revolutionize the branding industry as we know it?”

I will reserve my opinion for a later date.

PS – Thanks to Jason Douglas of Spyder Trap Online Marketing (@jasondouglas) for pointing this out.