What a guy
The first brand advert I remember really clearly was the one where Joey from Friends (before he was Joey from Friends) sets a bottle of ketchup on a rooftop, then heads down to the hotdog stand below just in time for it to land perfectly on his hotdog. The confidence. The timing. What a guy.
Sure, there were adverts before that. The red car and the blue car spring to mind. Mmm… Milky Way. But that ketchup one stuck with me. And looking back, I think I know why.
It made me feel something. Not just about ketchup, but about the brand itself. They were clever. Cool. Playful. They had a personality.
When Brands lived in the real world
Before the internet became the everything machine it is now, brands had to live in the real world. Billboards. Packaging. TV spots. The physicality of it all meant they had to make an impression — fast. And they did.
Take Camel Cigarettes, for example. (Product ethics aside for a moment.) They once had a billboard of a footballer blowing real smoke across the street. Real smoke. Every day. That’s not just marketing. That’s theatre. That’s someone saying, “Hey, look at us. We’re here. We’ve got something to say.”
That kind of expression made brands feel alive. They didn’t just tell you who they were. They showed you.
Then came Flash
And then… the internet.
At first, it was a playground. Brands jumped in headfirst and started doing weird, wonderful things online. The Flash era, in particular, was golden. Pure creative freedom. No rules. Just vibes.
Havaianas is a great example. They didn’t just have a website. They had an experience. It was silly, sunny, vibrant — everything the brand stood for. You didn’t need to read an “about” page to get it. You just knew.
And then it all got a bit… samey
These days? Visit their current site and… well, it’s fine. It works. It loads fast. It tells you what you need to know. But that spark? That sense of joy? Gone.
And they’re not alone.
There’s a reason for it, of course. Flash wasn’t great for analytics. Google couldn’t read it. Apple dropped support for it. The web needed to grow up, and in many ways it did.
Responsive design came along. SEO best practices. Data-driven design. Accessibility improvements. All good things.
But as we optimised, we also standardised. Scroll here. Three boxes there. CTA button at the end. Job done.
Somewhere in all of that, brands stopped expressing themselves and started just filling in the blanks.
What Are We Optimising For?
This is the bit that gets me.
We’ve built websites that convert. That rank. That perform beautifully across devices. But are they memorable? Are they distinctive? Do they make you feel something?
Sometimes, yes. But more often… not really.
And if a brand can’t express itself — if it can’t make you feel — then what’s the point?
So Where Do We Go From Here?
The good news? We’re not stuck. We’ve just forgotten that we have options.
The tech has caught up. With the right tools and the right thinking, we can make expressive websites again. We can create experiences that are unique, emotional, human. Experiences that don’t just look like the brand — they feel like it too.
Because a brand isn’t just colours and a logo. It’s a story. A mood. A point of view.
And the web? It’s still one of the best places in the world to tell it.
