In keeping with its light, colorful brand image, Skittles has unrolled some of the most colorful, original tweets out there. Even though very few make any logical sense:

It’s all fun and games until the Chinchillas show up with the Karaoke machine

Snails would win every moonwalking competition if they could learn to go backwards

And, our personal favorite:

Every time you RT this, a turtle learns kung-fu

We know what you are probably thinking: a group of stoners hacked the Skittles Twitter account and is now clogging your news feed with rainbow inspired lunacy. But the reality is far more interesting.

Skittles realized that it was a mass produced candy and that its only interaction with consumers was when it created small points of bliss. So why market the product in a serious way? The tweets (as well as Skittles’ ads and website) are all small bits of bliss that make you smile and remind you how awesome Skittles are. The company didn’t try to market themselves as essential to the American experience, because they realized that the just weren’t, in any conceivable way. Then they repeated that statement until it became a mantra.

This strategy isn’t crazy, and it’s not even new. This is actually a classic marketing principle created by the now defunct advertising house Benton & Bowles in the 1950s.You may not have heard of them, but you know their work. They gave us classic slogans such as “M&M’s melt in your mouth, not your hand”, “Look Ma! No Cavities!” and, of course, “Taste the Rainbow”

Just because we live in the age of social media doesn’t mean that the principles of marketing have changed. They’ve simply evolved.