Large consumer giants like Coke and Unilever are switching up their digital strategy again. According to a recent article from New Media Age,

Coca-Cola and Unilever are shifting their digital focus away from traditional campaign sites and towards community platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, as social media begins to dictate their marketing activity in 2010.

This move comes as no surprise as many companies are now relying on full-throttle, web strategies and not just a corporate website.

Microsites will not be eliminated completely, but rather serve as a method to drive users to social applications and sites. As proponents of social media, brands like these are relying heavily on being active in the social space so they can “fish where the fish are.”

Prinz Pinakatt, the Coca-Cola Company’s interactive marketing manager for Europe, said, “In some cases some of our campaigns won’t need a coke.com-hosted site. In most cases these will still exist as it’s the most obvious destination for a consumer, but it might only be a page linking to YouTube encouraging people to join the community there.

“We would like to place our activities and brands where people are, rather than dragging them to our platform,” Pinakatt added.

Aggressive reliance on social media well help these companies achieve great brand awareness and loyalty, while participating in conversations that are already taking place in the customers’ backyards (Facebook, Twitter, etc).

One question I have is how these mega brands are going to pull off a rich, engaging experience that is often created through microsites, if they must stick with the current design constraints that are in place at most of the social networking sites.

What do you think? Are corporate websites and microsites a thing of the past and will companies rely solely on social media, or where there be a hybrid model that includes reliance on both social sites and websites/microsites? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.