Often these views were challenged and, in some cases positively lambasted, by others (often from traditional advertising agencies) who maintained that online, although at the time uber sexy, was just a ‘minority thing’ or a fad.

Today those people, mostly, have changed their minds and, in the time it has taken them to do that, the whole online arena itself has morphed and evolved form just another push media into a truly social, participative and ubiquitous beast.

One of the best exponents of the online potential has been the BBC.  And despite old guard resistance from those at the BBC who, for years, had pushed content at largely passive viewers, the BBC’s online side has developed into one of the most compelling experiences one can get from any organisation. 

The BBC’s enviable position of not having to pander to shareholders demanding instant returns allowed them to literally transform the online media landscape with the iPlayer, become the second most popular entertainments site in the UK (after YouTube) and sit as the fifth most visited news website in the world.

It comes as a great surprise then that, as John Naughton of the Guardian writes here, it is the online arm along with WorldService radio that is to bear, by far, the biggest brunt of upcoming huge cuts.  ‘What do these two have in common?’ he asks – ‘they are both not television’.

Now the BBC is, as a business almost unique.  I remember doing some work on Balanced Scorecard initiatives with them and whereas all my other clients’ financial objectives were, of course, about making money, theirs were all about spending other peoples.

They are not involved in ‘selling’ a service or a product in the traditional sense as you probably are in your job.  Indeed, they might look nothing like your organisation.  But, perhaps there are some lessons here.

Perhaps some of the ‘old guard’ didn’t change their minds completely.  Perhaps some of them are still lurking in the shadows waiting for an opportune moment to rise up again and suggest that organisations should return to more traditional values and not spend money in these new fangled areas.

Those opportune moments are happening right now in a lot of Europe and the US.  As some of the most severe austerity measures in living memory are introduced it’s easy to hunker down, stick to what we know best and there are those who would welcome this.

In Asia we are not faced with such a landscape at the moment.  But opportune moments for the ‘old guard’ will come again in some form or another.  What will you do?  Hunker down and stop doing all that good stuff?  Incidentally, in 2001 when everybody was cutting back, Apple went into the retail store business. 

As Mr. Naughton sums up in his piece:

The BBC needs to spend more, not less, on its online operation if it is to have a chance of being relevant in 20 years’ time. It needs to do more innovation, not less, in technologies beyond the iPlayer. And, given that its top management apparently still doesn’t “get” the net, it badly needs a new chairman who does.

There is a warning here perhaps.

Towards the end of WIT last year, Morris Sim of Brand Karma stressed the need to reshape and evolve the shape of marketing spends.  As we move forward those new shapes remain relevant.  But be careful of those who, given the right conditions, might try and drag you back into their outdated comfort zones that, although keeping the finance department happy from week to week, ultimately slowly erode your credibility and relevance ratings.-*