A brand is a nebulous thing. It's the sum of the perceptions, feelings and beliefs toward a given company.

A recent trend in interactive marketing is to try and create websites that "capture" the online essence of the brand (Modernista, Skittles, and CP+B). Some have called these brand mirrors, others have called them brand nets. The gist of these websites is to give you insight into what people are saying about that company/product across the web. Whether good or bad, they highlight mentions on twitter/wikipedia etc.

Is this trend a gimmick, or the future? It's a little bit of both. The reality is most of these executions are more gimmick than not. At least CP+B's brand promise is creating advertising people talk about, so by showing just how much people are talking about their work, they accomplish what they set out to do. Skittles... not so much. Too often brand nets are more narcissistic than useful. They monitor the conversation without participating in it.

The real future is in building branded websites that transcend the traditional limits of the online space. They merge offline content and activities in powerful new online ways. Red Bull's new site is a good example of this. They use all of their sponsored events, athletes and spectacles to generate content that's exclusive to the web. This content shows by example what it means to give people wings. They take something that most people think of solely as "offline", event marketing, and use it to generate tons of solid content for their website.

Brand "nets" may not be the future, but branded content is here to stay.