I think the question of whether it's possible to get rid of a branded Website depends very much on the brand in question. Prior to the much-tweeted-about launch of the new Skittles site, there wasn't really a whole lot of reason for most people to go there; the new site is generating lots of buzz and is enjoying its 15 minutes of micro-fame, and there's a possibility that people will continue to check Skittles.com in the near future to see if it changes, or to see what interesting stuff might be forthcoming for the next iteration. But the lack of a branded Skittles site isn't going to have a major impact on either Skittles or its buying public, because, as Whitney Hess pointed out in her blog post about it (1), Skittles doesn't need a Website to enhance the product. So I'm guessing that over time, this technique will be perceived to have worked well for Skittles, and any impact on the brand is likely to be positive. The Modernista example is also successful, because it was kind of cool and slightly risky when they did it--good attributes to associate with an agency--and yet you can get to pretty much any part of the traditional site with a single click from the persistent menu, so functionality hasn't been lost.
On the other hand, if you were going to, say, a car manufacturer's site to find the nearest dealership, would you want to be detoured to an overlay menu on top of a social networking site? Would that enhance your perception of the brand? Probably not--and that's not even a particularly good example, it's just the first one that popped into my head. What if it were your health insurance provider? And so on. My sense is that traditional branded sites aren't going away, but that we'll continue to see new ways of approaching brand interactions, well beyond the Skittles model. (1) http://whitneyhess.com/blog/2009/03/why-the-new-skittles-website-is-ridiculous-but-i-dont-actually-care/ 2009/3/5 tina725 <[email protected]>: > Anyone beeing keeping track of skittles.com? First twitter, then > facebook and now Wikipedia. Is it possible to really get rid of a > branded website? Is that where the future of web design is headed? > Interested to hear what people have to say. > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [email protected] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
