BBC - Brand Blows Commercial

The BBC, one of Britian's best loved brands, may be about to move away from its secure core values into the maelstrom of the international media brands. Mark Thompson, the Director General has declared his ambition: “The BBC is the only European brand that could take on Google and AOL.”

The desire of the DG to build the institution of the BBC is understandable, and he clearly recognises that the BBC brand is its major asset. The paradox is that building the institution into a leading global media player in a commercial sense may damage the very brand that they want to build on.

It has also been announced that BBC's commercial arm is going to launch an advetising funed web-site, BBC.com. If this is successful, the 163m people who currently tune in to the BBC world service each week, and countless others who value the television, radio and internet services, may come to see the BBC in a new way, as another international commercial media/communication brand alongside Google, AOL, MSN, BT, Vodafone, Yahoo, Disney et al.

What the BBC has stood for, in the minds of many of its audiences, has been impartiality. This has given it its authority. Now that it buys much of its creative content in a competitive market, it cannot really claim that its uniqueness can come from its productions. So its impartiality, based on its public srvice remit, is its critical differentiator.

Once it become seen by its audiences as another commercially-minded, partly advertising-funded media conglomerate, the brand will have little more claim to impartiality than News Corporation.

It may be Britain's best hope of creating another huge international multi-media conglomerate, but is that what the public want and need? Success for this strategy might ultimately reduce the burden of the licence fee, but the loss of brand value that will be spent to build this new BBC may be a greater loss to the Corporation and the British people?