Most cute websites and ads are escapist. A quick, web-based flight of fantasy is relatively cheap to make and can lure thousands of users. New York-based AKQA went a step further by making Coke's hugely popular, fantasy inspired "Happiness Factory" ad into a casual game.

Users choose to be one of the strange, unearthly characters who help "build" a Coke. They get to tour the whimsical landscape and collect game points as they go.

"People wanted to immerse themselves in that world so we proposed creating a site," said Lars Bastholm, co-creator of AKQA. The game also had to be globally appealing (the site appears in 40 countries) so the agency hit on making it an overt escape from the workaday world. "One of the things everyone around the world has in common is that they have to work but they don't always want to be working," Bastholm said. The appeal of getting away from the humdrum also pairs nicely with Coke's "Open Happiness" theme, Bastholm said. "It's about joy for living and happiness and fun and Coke's role in that."

Microsoft's Office for Mac site also invites users to spend time with its product through interactive animation. The site originated as a print ad that was adapted for the web by New York-based agency Firstborn. The site animates the childlike stick figures of the print edition and enables them to live out the workplace idioms they are supposed to symbolize. For example, "taking it to the next level" is represented by a girl holding a giant "it" who, with a click of the mouse, climbs up a ladder to a floating platform.

The juxtaposition of a technical product and a consciously naive presentation was supposed to make the site "feel more 'Apple-like,'" said Dan LaCivita, senior vice president and executive director of Firstborn. 

"[The software applications] are very utilitarian, but we wanted to bring something a little more fantastic to it," LaCivita explained.