We’ve all been there… click on an ad and you’re directed to a fancy flash intro page that a bunch of people have put a whole lot of effort to make slick and professional. Often there’s a fair amount of effort put in to making it look “unprofessional,” but in either case the result is the same – 90-seconds (a life-time if you’re ADD like me) of nothing for a bunch of music (don’t get me started on non-opted music) some moving imagery and still a bunch of nothing!

Why do brands still insist on doing this? There appears to be an element of design for fancy rather than function. While flash can look fantastic, it doesn’t necessarily get us to the heart of information we wanted when we clicked on an ad in the first place. Let’s remember why 99% of people use the web in ever increasing minutes – information and functionality. We use the web because it’s faster (mostly) and more efficient. When we’re using it for entertainment, it’s generally because we can get the stuff quicker than if we were to wait for it to be released or it’s the only place we can get such tightly targeted niche content.

Here’s an idea for money better spent – build your microsite to provide specific information and functionality. If you’re building it purely for entertainment and brand engagement make sure it works simply and easily and gets people to the guts of it quickly. Save yourself even more time, energy and money and don’t build it yourself at all. Let publishers (those in the business of building form and functionality) build one for you that caters to their specific audience. This way you can immerse your brand in relevant content. Just make sure it’s useful / entertaining and simple. Many publishers have purpose-built content management systems to make this happen – AKA – FaceBook or MySpace. Others have threads and discussion forums ripe for the task and many can turn around an elegant solution within a couple of days that meets brand and content objectives for a fraction of the cost.

Here’s an example of the very simple things we do for brands on our sites all the time:

There are plenty of other ways to achieve an outstanding brand experience on your own, but beware the cost! If you do have the budget and the fortitude to see it through – David Armono of Advertising Age provides some good tips here