illusion of control, "about" vs "around," and @theBKlounge/Skittles/Snickers

@theBKlounge hijacker Caleb Kramer was recently invited by Edelman to join them in an all-expenses-paid-for trip to Orlando to preview the world's first Whopper Bar.

While there, he was reflecting on this as BK's response to his hijacking, as well as the stark contrast between the Skittles approach to brand control against Snickers' recent and coincidentally timed lawsuit re: Snckrz.com.

Snickers reminds me that there's this "illusion of control"-ish idea where people fool themselves into believing something to the effect of "if you take away the channels with which people can say bad things about your brand, they'll have to stop thinking bad things about your brand."

This is silly, of course. People will continue to think bad things about your brand. Worse yet, they will continue to say bad things in the 2384905723 other places you don't control.

As I remember, there was a time where the Skittles home/twitterfeed page was hit with some vulgar phrase that the crowds were playing around with; I don't remember exactly what it was but I'm pretty sure it was bad enough that if I did remember it's not something I'd want to type out anyway ha.

I imagine this is the kind of thing Snickers is trying to "avoid." But it's faulty thinking: did anyone actually think "[derogatory/offensive phrase]" about Skittles? No. Rather, it was a simple silly crowd trick for people who just wanted to show up on the page "saying" something bad around Skittles.

Not at, not about, but around Skittles.

Does anyone think [derogatory/offensive phrase] about Snickers now, for taking away a cool webtoy people were having fun with? You bet.