Since the inception of the Web as a commercial vehicle, marketers have puzzled over how to effectively market an offline brand online. As least part of the answer, it seems, is starting to become clear: Use Flash.

Ford, 7-UP, and Sony Classical are just a few of the companies that are using Macromedia Flash 5 to reach out to their customers via the Internet.

Ford Motor Company used Flash to launch the 2002 SVT Focus site, svtfocusonline.com, which explicitly targets younger drivers than the car&singlequot;s traditional market. The site uses Macromedia Flash to put users behind the wheel of a 2002 SVT Focus, provide them with a 360-degree view of the exterior, and ensure the branded site worked well across various platforms.

"Ford needed to make sure that we not only made a site that appealed to a younger demographic, but one that also conveyed all of the car&singlequot;s brand attributes: performance, substance, exclusivity, and value," says Cale Hotton, Web Manager, Ford SVT. "Macromedia Flash gave us the wide reach we needed to deliver an engaging, interactive site that would serve as the online showcase for this impressive car."

7-UP used the design tool to extend its brand online. The humorous and edgy spirit of the 7-UP advertising campaign was brought to the web with an immersive, branded, interactive site . Users get to control the behavior of the site, with Flash powering the soda bubble user interface, which can be changed anytime site visitors "shake the can." The site, which also features soda-themed games, paid off, with the average length of visit climbing by 1,400%, the number of visitors increasing several hundred percent.

"At 7-UP, we use Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver to bring the energy and edginess of our advertising into our online presence," says Bryan Mazur, 7-UP brand manager. "We strive to present a cohesive message to our consumers at every possible interface, and Macromedia helps make that possible for us on the Internet."

Sony Classical uses Flash and Dreamweaver UltraDev 4 to create and maintain all of its artists&singlequot; sites. The team uses UltraDev as a development system to manage the development process to create compelling branded sites. The products have improved the company&singlequot;s productivity and workflow and enables them to create innovative sites with streaming music, automated photo galleries, and an overall pleasant user experience.

"Before we built an integrated workflow around Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver UltraDev with our internal team and consultants, we created each site from the ground up with no real "papertrail", which obviously took a lot longer," says Manech Ibar, Director of New Media at Sony Classical. "Using UltraDev and Flash gives us an organized workflow with notes on specific changes making sites that are uniquely branded to the style of each artist, with a consistent back-end system that makes the entire site easy to maintain and manage."

Over the next five years, the US online audience is expected to expand from 50% of the US population to more than 71%, according to Jupiter Media Metrix. According to Jupiter consumer survey results, 45% of online consumers use information they find online to make decisions about which manufacturer&singlequot;s brands and products to buy off-line. Jupiter believes that if a company accounts for positive branding effects of an online presence, return on investment can be 25 to 35% higher than with simple direct marketing metrics.