Evolution of the brand site

There's no shortage of experts declaring the Website "dead." I've even written articles predicting the demise of the microsite. The idea is the Web is moving to a fluid series of interactions that take place in relevant contexts. Trying to lure people to your Big Corporate Website seems a little old fashioned.

But what will happen to those sites? Agency.com tried something cool interesting with its use of Skittles.com as a way to point to what's already out there on the Web about Skittles, mixing the stuff the brand has produced with consumer stuff on Wikipedia and, most notoriously, Twitter. More often, brands like Axe are turning their sites into a place to point to the distributed experiences they've created elsewhere.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky is preparing a relaunch of Burger King's site that's long overdue. The current site is a monstrosity that would make an ideal example in a Wikipedia entry for "Flashturbation." The new site will remake it into a simple collection of links to the dozens of experiences and pieces of content around the brand. The trick is in the navigation. It uses sliders for users to filter the content based on fun, food and king. Some of the content lives on BK.com; much of it, like Seth McFarland's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, lives elsewhere. As Ana pointed out to me, the beauty of this is the simplicity. It's a small thing but completely fits with the brand positioning to "have it your way."

Comments

[Matt]

There will always be a need for 'websites' though people like Joe Jaffe and Steve Rubel continually declare them dead.

http://weareorganizedchaos.com/index.php/2009/05/05/joe-jaffe-and-steve-rubel-are-wrong-the-website-is-not-deadjust-evolving/

[Geoff]

Hi Brian,

Your previous post and a few others themed around the demise of the microsite have had me thinking about the same thing.

I've used the same examples and a few additional ones in this post on brand presence strategy in the social web era:
http://geoffnorthcott.com/blog/2009/06/brand-presence-strategy-in-the-social-web-era/

It doesn't seem like there will be one strategy for everyone, but syndication, aggregation and redirection to social spaces are the key themes emerging, with a range of options available depending on your level of commitment to social spaces and how much of a web presence your brand really needs.

Cheers,
Geoff

[Josh]

Keep in mind Agency.com's Skittles site was a direct rip of http://www.modernista.com/

Reasonably well done but lacking originality.

It can be very difficult to pursue a distributed content strategy for corporates as their culture is so often about control, micro-management, minutiae, arbitrary decision making committees and painstaking approval processes. They're too slow and cautious to participate in this space in any genuine way.