The Emotion in Branding: Real World

Now that you know how and why brands depend on the consumer’s emotions, we will take a look at how certain brands play into your life. A key to building a strong brand is to realize how things affect you. Once you have that eureka moment, you will begin to see through the clutter and know how to see what is really going on.

Lets look at an example from “Emotional Branding” by Daryl Travis. One of the best examples that Mr. Travis uses to explain the power of emotions behind branding deals with loyalty to brands. Lets look at salt for a second. Salt is salt. There is no other way to make salt than by putting sodium and chlorine together. However, more people choose to buy the name brand of Morton’s Salt than any other brand. Ironically, Morton’s Salt actually produces most of the salt in other brands. So why the loyalty to a product that can’t have any difference? It is because there is a sense of comfort in Morton’s. Your mother used it and now you do. Since they have been around for so long and have never hurt their reputation with customers, they have essentially become the standard for the salt business. We trust that Morton’s salt will be the best we can get and we take comfort in knowing that.

So why do you buy the things you buy? Is it because of the price or the quality of the item? If an item is over $40, you probably buy it because you feel that you can trust it.

Here is a fun exercise to see if you are letting your emotions choose your brands for you. Pick 10 items, five that are higher priced and five that are lower. Write down why you buy that brand. If you buy Ivoryä soap, why do you buy it? If you always buy Ford cars, why is that? Once you have completed that list, think of brands that compete with them. Are there any major differences between the two brands, or do you prefer one over the other because of how it makes you feel to own it.

It’s not wrong to love the brands you do. In fact, if you feel attached to your brands then that company is doing their job. I proudly wear my Express shirt with my Steve Madden Shoes and drive my Ford Mustang everywhere, while carrying all of my Apple products.

Now that you know how emotions effect your purchasing power, you need to carry it over into your own life. How can you make people feel secure and comfortable with your business or yourself? What can you do to go out of the way to make someone trust you? Feel free to share your tips below!

Emotion in Branding: Emotional Connectors

Emotions play a big part in who we are. They tell us when we like certain things, when we hate certain things, and they give the drive behind what we do. No one lacks emotion and the key to being happy is truly understanding what moves us.

You may be asking yourself, “What does feeling and emotions have to do with this very business-centered term called branding?” The key to understanding how they relate is to truly understand what a brand is.

A brand is not just a logo and a tagline. Those are part of the physical representations of what a brand is, but they don’t show you the core. The value of a brand is in how people perceive you or your company. Do you help people feel better about themselves?

For example, every time I walk into the Apple store I am greeted and immediately asked if I need help. I can tell that the employees like their jobs and are passionate about the products. Even though I went in there knowing I already had a fondness for the company, I leave with my emotions for them strengthened. On the other hand, I am trying to cancel my AT&T U-Verse TV service. (As a new year’s resolution I promised to focus on things to enhance my life all around and TV isn’t a necessity.) The only way to cancel your service is to call their service line. This sends you to an automated messaging system that after about 10 minutes passes you off to a customer service line. If you want to buy a new service or upgrade you can talk to someone immediately. However, if you would like to cancel, you need to sit on hold for up to 30 minutes. (I have given up every time I got to the 30-minute mark.) Now I relate my experience with AT&T with aggravation and frustration.

So how can you make sure your brand, whether it be personal or a business, is giving the people the right feelings and strengthening the emotional ties?

1. Customer Satisfaction is Key: Make sure you treat everyone you interact with in the way you want to be treated. While a first impression is important, every interaction after that is as important. People have the ability to change their impressions of you. So make sure you treat them with respect and show them that someone is there listening.
2. Be Human: This step is one that many business owners forget after the years. They begin to think of their business, as it’s own thing. You represent your business and your business represents you. People don’t want to interact with a computer and you shouldn’t behave like one. Listen to them at let people see your human hat. They will be more likely to connect with you and not a business name. If you have employees, make sure they are representing the human race and the feelings you want people to get from your company.
3. Survey Often: This doesn’t mean you need to collect responses from people every month, but you should be asking people how they feel about you. A great way to do this is ask them if there is one way you can make your service better. This will get them to discuss your service candidly and let them address issues they may have without complaining. It also relates back to being human. You have the ability to give them better emotions about your business than before it becomes a serious problem.
4. Be Tough: You have to be tough on yourself. Evaluate your personality or your company from a third person perspective. Sometime’s people are nice enough to ignore things you do that cause negative emotions. You need to have the ability to look outside of yourself to strengthen the feeling people get from you.

The more emotional connectors you build between you and someone else, the stronger your brand will be. You want people to get happy when they think about you. The fulfillment of a strong brand is when people feel that their lives will be missing something without that aspect of their lives. As therapists, you are able to pass on positive emotions better than any toothbrush or computer can. There is no reason you can’t have a strong brand.

The Emotion of Branding: Part 1

We are just coming down off of the holiday high and I am sure your house is filled with a few new things from loved ones. Every single one of those items you received most likely has a brand attached to it. Most people think that a brand is just a name and it is, but at the same time it is way more than that. We live by our brands and we use them to define ourselves. You don’t just wear clothes; you wear an outfit you selected at the Gap or at Express. You don’t just drive a car; you drive your Ford, Chevy, or Hummer. Even more important to every musician, you live by your brands. You proudly carry around your Remo drums or your Taylor guitar.

When it comes down to it, a product is a product. There is very few differences between one brand and another. You put the added benefits of owning certain brands over others because of the reputation that goes with it. Brands play on our emotions; the more you like a brand the more you will incorporate it into who you are.

So why do brands have this much pull on who we are? The added value of a brand is completely intangible. While certain products are better than others, each person brings their own preferences to the table. Some people prefer to use a regular PC to an Apple. As for me, an Apple fanatic, I would argue the benefits of Apple any day. Knowing the pull that brands have on your emotions and who you characterize yourself to be, I can understand people who feel strongly in the other direction.

As a business owner, what does this mean for you? First of all, you have a brand. People are connected with you and clients have an emotional tie to what you provide them. While you probably don’t have the ability to create a strong emotional tie with tons of people, like a clothing or car company would, people still relate to you with their emotions. Your clients may think of you as the highlight of their week. Imagine if you had to give up your business and tell all of your clients that you won’t be able to see them. What would their reaction be? If you think that they would be affected in anyway, then they are emotionally connected to you, your brand, and what you bring to them.

Check back on Wednesday for Part 2 of this series on how emotions are the driving force behind a good brand. We will look at the ways to strengthen the emotional connectors behind your brand. Also check out this short documentary “Thank you for the Music” that touches on the end of the music therapy program at Michigan State University:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfbAjSGc03g]

New Year, New Opportunities

Once again we are a mere two weeks away from a new year. In the blur of the post-holiday food coma we will begin to write our new years resolutions. Some of us vow we will get healthy, others promise to make life-changing decisions. However, there are a few of us that promise to make the move from an employee to business owner or grow the businesses we already have. While most people are lucky to have their New Year’s resolution stick into February, I encourage you to make 2012 your year.

Trust me, I know what it is like to let a New Years resolution go unfulfilled. For years I would make myself promises and never follow through with them. I was planning for 2011 to be the same as every other year, until it decided to hit me on top of the head and turn everything around. I let 2011 pass by pretty much like every other year, until May.

I just had a birthday and was planning to let the next seven months fly by. I told myself, “I guess 2012 will be my year.” Then 2011 decided to flip my world upside down. My fiancé, who some of you know as @EclecticGuitar, got offered an internship with Dr. Reuer at MusicWorx Inc. At that moment, I knew 2011 wasn’t going to let me float by. I walked into my job, where I managed the entire communications department, and told them I had to leave. We sold our entire apartment and my car; three weeks later we were in a Volkswagen beetle with our two cats driving across the country. At the same time, I was accepted to a graduate program and began to study for my Masters in public relations.

Here are five tips to take action to make your New Years Resolutions successful:

1. Tell People: You need to be held accountable. The main reason why most people give up their resolutions is because they don’t tell anyone. If you let people know what you want to get accomplished, then you will have more motivation to keep that promise.
2. Know Your Goals: One thing that is a big problem with resolutions, is that people pick remarkable goals. You get excited when you think about what could be, but then you realize that you set yourself up for failure. Pick smaller more attainable goals and you will be more motivated. If you finish early, you can always expand your goal.
3. Find Help: Some goals may be beyond your reach. That’s ok, but there are people willing to help. If you want to shed a few pounds, find a gym and a trainer. If you want to grow your business, talk to someone, gather up free materials, or take a class. If you have a goal of growing your business, find a consultant or public relations firm to help expand your reach and come up with ideas you may not have thought of.
4. Build Your Network: One way to help achieve goals is to meet new people. Even if building your network isn’t a goal for this year, it should be something you are always focusing on. For tips on networking tips, check out our post “Who Knows You? Five Tips to Improve Your Networking”. Who knows the next person you strike up a conversation with can be the key to accomplish one of your goals.
5. Revisit Your Goals: This step is key. We all have busy lives, and each year seems to get more hectic. We get so excited about New Year’s Resolutions because we focus on them. By the time we get through the day-to-day routines we set for ourselves, the resolutions get pushed to the back of our minds until we revisit them in December. If you write down your goals and look at them once a month, you will stay on track.

Hope this gets you in the spirit to planning your news years resolutions. Remember a great way to get your business on track is to define your brand. Check out BRAND CAMP, a great way to get yourself on the right start in the New Year!

Technology and Music: Part 3: Do’s and Dont’s of Social Media

Now you have your brand developed and on the web, so whats next? This is a common question that most people ask themselves when they are starting to create their on-line professional presence. If you want to be successful and expand your presence, you have to walk a fine line of not enough and too much.

You may be asking yourself, What does he mean by this?

Well, take a look at your normal social media participation. You are probably either updating it constantly or you check it every few weeks, you want to be in the middle of that line with your professional persona. When you are just using these technologies to keep up with your friends, you only need to worry about your participation level as much as you care to.

When your building and maintaining your professional persona on these sites you need to be constantly active, but not pushy. This mean you should always be checking to see what other people are saying to you on the sites. People want to be communicated with, and in a world filled with a need for instant gratification, you will loose peoples interests if you don’t respond quickly. If you publish a demo of a song on Purevolume, and people comment on it, try to comment back. Show them that you are active on your own sites, and that you aren’t the reclusive musician. Also, try to make sure that you share relevant information with those that follow you. If you are a music therapist, send out information around that topic. If you see a movie or book coming out that features your field, then share the link. If your profession was featured on the news, then share the link. Don’t post a link to a cat doing something funny, no matter how cute it is. This is probably the biggest factor that causes people to loose followers. Yes, they might find that cat funny and cute, but they came to your site to get information on you or your expertise. Unless you were giving therapy to that cat because of their traumatic but cute incident, then it is not relevant.

The other biggest don’t is that you should not tweet or post about every second of your day. Just because your Grandma wants to hear about what you have for breakfast every single morning, that your sitting on your favorite park bench, or your keeping up with your personal hygiene, doesn’t mean your professional acquaintances want to hear about that. A general rule of thumb would be if it doesn’t directly relate to your field, then would it be something you tell to someone in a business meeting?

Also, NEVER and I mean NEVER, complain or vent on these sites. Even if you think that you can’t loose your job by saying something bad about your boss or your job because you are the boss, you can damage your brand even worse. Imagine a potential client (music therapists) or a Event Coordinator (Professional Musician) hears about how amazing you are in what you do. The first place they are going to go is to your facebook page and see what they can find out about you. If you complain about a past gig or client, you might have lost that paycheck before it ever came. As before, if you wouldn’t say it in a client meeting, don’t say it anywhere on the web.

Technology and Music: Part 2: Social Media and You

Now that you have your brand figured out, it is time to start putting your brand to work for you. You have to live into your brand. Every time you meet with a new client or a potential employer, make sure you take some time to reflect on that meeting after it happens. Did your Brand Essence come into play during that meeting? Do you think that Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So walked out of there thinking you were “fill in the blanks?”. When you are giving your therapy session, did you keep your brand promise to that client? It is going to be tough but to have a solid brand you really have to eat, breath, and sleep it. But remember, you don’t announce what the details of your brand are to the world, so don’t think that if you can announce your brand promise to make it easier for your clients or audience to see where you are coming from.

Now that you have your Brand and are living into it, it is now time to begin building your brand into your Social Media sites. In the section below, I am going to walk you through a variety of Social Media tools that you can use to strengthen your Brand Presence and get noticed in the world. You can use bits and pieces of each, or you can decide that one tool is best for you. That is the great and frustrating thing about Social Media, there is no right way of doing it but there can be wrong ways.

Facebook:

Facebook is probably the one place you want to be involved with on-line, no matter what your goals are. There are over 500 Million active users on Facebook, and it is reported that 50% of those people log on each day. That is 250 Million people that you can potentially influence on a given day. Now for a Music Therapist, you will want to concentrate on the city you are in, but for a musician you might want to gain exposure over a state or a country or even the world. For more stats on the usage of facebook, click here.

The key to expanding your brand and advertising is hitting people where they currently are. That is why billboards are placed on popular highways. People drive past them, they see them without actively going to see them. Every time you post a message to your wall, your friends get that message on theirs. They are already sitting there, using the site, so why not take advantage of their active attention.

Now for your options. You have two general options when deciding what direction to go with Facebook. The first option is to create a page for your professional self. This way people aren’t linked directly to your personal profile when looking for you on this site. The benefits of this are that you can still have your private space where you can maintain personal relationships without getting friend requested from every person looking at you professionally.  You can flood the airwaves with professional links and information without pushing it on your college buddies, unless they want to go like your page. The cons of using this technique are that you have to go to the page to update, and you have to update. I would say if you don’t provide 1 new (USEFUL) post a day, then you will loose your audience.

Your other option is to convert your personal page to your professional persona. This allows you to be connected to your professional digital self without having to click over to a different page. Every update and wall post can be conveniently pushed to your smart phone and you can be connected everywhere. I love this option for the solo professional who is making a career out of themselves. If you are your brand, then everything you do should be that brand. It leaves a big loophole if you say I live into my brand during the 9 to 5 hours and then I am Nega-Scott during nights and weekends. The cons to this are that you no longer are away from your business (might also be a pro), and you have to live like your brand. If you don’t want potential clients seeing your drunken side, then you might want to keep those photos on your iPhoto and not on the web.

Twitter:

Twitter is a great site to get a part of, but if you want it to work for you be prepared to be logged in. If you want to use twitter effectively then you have to be prepared to update it a few times a day, with meaningful posts or links. Let people know what your doing as far as professional purposes go. We want to hear if you are working on a new song or if you are giving a presentation to the board at a hospital to advocate for music therapy. We don’t want to hear that your bagel with jam was super delicious this morning and now you are on your way to yoga. Also, feel free to send out relevant links about your profession. Let people know that you are connected to what other are doing in your field and not just yourself. The real challenge is trying to make you brand personality apparent through each tweet. If you say your creative, then make your tweets creative. If you say you are a strict professional, don’t be cracking jokes everyday.  So as far as pros and cons go of using twitter, a pro is that you can reach another massive group of active viewers, and you can link it to your facebook so both update with one message. A con is that you have to actively update, twitter is so quickly updated that you can easily be forgotten if you aren’t an active presence.

Bandcamp:

Here is a great social media site that performance musicians can really use to benefit themselves. For those of you that record your own music, do you ever dream of having it sold? Well now you can, but it might not be in the way you think. First of all, I would stop dreaming about having your cd carried in an FYE or a BEST BUY because FYE is going out of business and Best Buy will have to keep changing to adapt to the ever digital market. Also, it can be difficult to get your music on iTunes, and then unless they have heard of you people might not find you. This site allows you to sell your music digitally to your fans and lets them do most of the work. Some of the features are that you set your price, people are able to share your music via other social networking sites (which gives you a wider brand presence), and a custom design to really make your brand shine. For a full list of features, click here.  Pros is that it gives you a chance to network and share your music while you get a profit, and I can’t really find any relevant cons.

There are hundreds of other sites that I can talk about that can benefit your brand. I feel that this is a good start to get an online presence that represents your brand and they can all link together. I do want to warn you though, that it doesn’t happen overnight and if you really want to use this technology to your benefit you have to put the work in to get the results out. So just stay active, make sure your brand is being properly identified on-line and stay positive.

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*This is Part 2 of 3 in a series about branding and networking your career on-line for musicians.

Technology and Music: Part 1: Developing Your Brand

Music is an important part of our lives. Most of us listen to music in the car, in the office, on our ipods as we work out, but how often do we actually think of the people behind the music. There is a mass of people in this world that choose to make a career out of music and they are not the ones who have aspirations to become the next top 10 radio stars. Most of these musicians want to make a living as a classical performance artist, an educator, a music therapist, or an accompanist. These positions are some of the most difficult to obtain to because not only do you have to participate in the rat race of finding an open position out there, like the rest of our fields, you also have to back it up with your performance abilities and be an advocate for yourself. So I am putting together this 3 part series on how to use various technologies to help brand yourself as a musical genius before you ever sit down to audition for that job.

Part 1: Developing your Brand

The first step in getting your name out there as a musician is to decide what you want to communicate about yourself. This is a little bit different than developing a brand for a business or a organization, and in my opinion developing a personal brand is one of the hardest things to do. What do I mean by this?  Companies have the chance to rebrand themselves if they make a huge mistake or just want people to feel differently about them. The best example of this is when companies change their logo. This is a sign that you are supposed to feel differently about them, or that they have grown or changed in some way. Sometimes companies decide to change their brand identity, just because. One classic example of this is the GAP controversy from this past year.

But when you are talking about a personal brand, you have to realize that you might not be able to change it as easy as a company. If you build a really bad brand for yourself, you can’t just go delete everything about you that does exist on-line and change your name to get away from that Brand image. So the best bet is to be on top of it from the beginning.  Before we get into the actual steps to develop your brand, here are a few rules for keeping your social personality in check.

1. So all that information you keep hearing about watching what you put on facebook or twitter, is true. However, I do encourage you to leave your profile completely open. The image you show to people when you do keep your profile private, is that you have something much worse to hid than you probably do. Also, it is good to show potential employers that you do have a social life. Once again, there is a fine line between social life and having a bender each weekend.
2. Don’t tweet about everything you do! If your going to use your twitter account as a networking tool, only use it to update on things that are relevant to your field. We don’t need to hear about what your having for breakfast, or how disgusting that public restroom was. Instead send us a link about a story on another music therapist, or on a new venue for performance artists.
3. Keep your profile updated! If your going to write a blog, tweet, or even use Facebook, don’t leave it blank for weeks or even days. People will stop checking if you leave the same stagnant information online. You will just have to work twice as hard to gain their attention back if you do loose them. Trust me!

So now that you know basic rules, lets talk about developing your brand. There are three parts to your brand.

1. Brand Essence – it is the feeling that your audience takes away from the brand. It describes the timeless elements that are attributed to the brand. It is stated in only a few words or phrases, and if you have went over that then you haven’t correctly identified it. For example, Jon Doe’s music therapy brand essence is “Creative performance, Radical Kindness, and Passionate detail”. Basically what this says is that everyone who meets Jon Doe, the music therapist, they will walk away feeling that his performance was creative, and that he was overly kind and he was passionately detailed about his sessions and dedication to the client.
2. Brand Personality – It is 4 or 5 words describe the personality of your brand. Are you creative, fun, outgoing, unique. Now remember this is not who you are personally, it is who you want your professional self to be. This will be used to let you know what personality traits you want to embody when you are out in the world.
3. Brand Promise – This is what you are promising to your clients or to your orchestra or your audience. It is a statement that usually starts with “Only John Doe, MTBC provides …” or “When you come to see Jane Doe, MTBC, LCAT … ” Check out this article to find out more about what the brand promise entails.

So take some time to figure out what these are for you professional self. You can even do this if you aren’t in music, but the next articles in the series will be music career focused. Your brand is something that you don’t publicize, it is only something for you to keep in mind as you present your professional self.

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* This is Part 1 in a series of 3 to help develop and maintain a personal brand for musicians and music related fields. All information can be adapted to creating your brand for other fields but this series specifically focuses on building your musical brand.

Facebook Yourself

Whether you are a seasoned professional or a student you still have to build your own personal brand. We will touch on how to build your business Facebook page in another post. What is really going to matter, is how you sell yourself on Facebook. As I said in a previous post, this website (Facebook) is what serves as your first impression.

Whatever you do, I guarantee Facebook is the first place most people go and try to do research on you. If you meet a new person at school or at a job, they probably try to find out all they can on Facebook. I wouldn’t doubt it if you did the same thing to everyone you meet. But it is also where potential employers are going to go and look before they hire you. So what are good tips to think about when you are designing your personal Facebook page?

First of all you want to make sure you really represent yourself. Don’t create a reality that isn’t yourself, because all that will accomplish is to set everyone who looks at it up for disappointment when they really meet you.

The other big mistake I see that people make all the time is that they block off their personal Facebook account or change their name so they can’t be found. This is a mistake, especially in todays society. If your Facebook doesn’t exist outside of the realm of your friends because you only use your first and middle name or set it to private, that shows people one of two things. Either you do some pretty stupid stuff that you don’t want people to know about or you are so anti-social that you don’t even belong to one of the most popular networks out there.

The best approach is to have your Facebook open and available. Blocking it off is like going to a job interview with a paper bag over your head. Also, here is a little secret that you might be shocked by. It is okay, even surprisingly comforting to see you have a few pictures with you drinking with your friends. That shows a potential employer that you are sociable and real. What 20-something doesn’t have a drink here and there. Hiding it on your Facebook just lets employers wonder what else you are hiding.

But still make sure you keep it in check. Even know it’s great to see you have a drink with your college buddies, we don’t need to see the picture of you with your head in a toilet or streaking down the road after one too many Jagerbombs. Most importantly be yourself, don’t try to sell something that doesn’t exist.

Developing you Online Reputation

If you were to type “social networking sites” into Google, you would get about 65,400,000 results. For business owners seeking to make an impact in the digital world, the strategies are seemingly endless. What online communities are best for your brand? How can your brand engage your customers within those communities? Is a company blog going to establish your credibility?

To navigate the digital landscape, we have synthesized key elements to develop your online reputation:

Perception Development

Before developing your reputation strategy, create a compelling and unique brand identity. To start your thinking about how to develop your brand identity, consider these three questions:

• What are people going to rely on you for? This is your value proposition. What value are you consistently offering? Are you delivering high-quality marketing insights or are you positioning your client ahead of the curve?  Defining value proposition is important in understanding how to position your brand.
• What is your unique selling point? Figure out what makes coming to you a better experience than going to one of your many competitors or why your product is something entirely new.
• Developing your voice. Is your company going to fall in ranks with the status quo, or are you the innovative alternative? Imagine your brand as a person. How would they talk, act, and dress. For a more detailed guide to online branding, read Jack Yan’s Online branding: A definitive guide.

Developing Online Strategies to Meet Your Objectives

After refining your brand personality, identify your objectives and prioritize your efforts. What do you seek to gain from building your reputation online? Market leadership? Building meanginful relationships? To start your thinking about potential online objectives, here are common industry goals and strategies to meet them:

Credibility

Establishing credibility in your field is essential in building meaningful relationships and elevating your online presence. Here are some strategies to establishing credibility in the digital marketplace:

• Answer questions on LinkedIn or Yahoo Answers—These platforms will allow you to give free advice to people who are searching for it. As you answer more questions, naturally you will build relationships and authority in the field. Potentially, this could lead to new business.
• Blogging—You can also develop a blog to post market insights and comment on industry news. Additionally, you can use your blog as a vehicle to market your business via business (Entrepreneur.com, LinkedIn, etc) and social networks. Take example from Mario Lavandeira (aka Perez Hilton). The opinion-orientated voice of celebrity gossip blog, www.perezhilton.com, Mario Lavandeira has made his career by successfully building his reputation into celebrity gossip columnist no. 1 through writing about the latest, most juicy celebrity news.
• Wikipedia—As the first-stop online research platform, Wikipedia is an excellent tool for establishing credibility—as you can create targeted inbound links to your site. Actively and intelligently contributing to the online encyclopedia can drive readers seeking more information about your expertise.

Market Leadership

• New, Innovative Tools—Creating a new tool for industry professionals can elevate your market leadership. Take example from PR Squared—a blog managed by the social media firm, Shift Communications. Their aim was to provide insightful social media advice and commentary without charging content fees. To establish their market leadership and forward-thinking philosophy in the marketplace, PR Squared released their revolutionary Social Media Press Release. The template sought to guide the PR efforts of industry professionals.

Connecting

• Professional Networks—Business-to-business networking is critical in building relationships within your industry. The Visa Business network on Facebook can be a useful tool in finding, reaching out and building relationships with other professionals.
• Social Networks—All the rave, social networks provide data and analytics on specific, granular, segmented audiences. Businesses are increasingly investing more effort into reaching the mass audiences using social media. Think Skittles. They have taken advice from the millions of people invested in social networking and designed their entire web presence around sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. By focusing on where their audience already spends most of their time, Skittles is able to effectively target and engage their consumers.