I have to admit I have a soft spot for the BBC. They've been around for nearly 100 years, but they embraced technology and the Internet relatively early. I've seen so many amazing product people come out of the BBC, and many are now spread across Europe and beyond.
Back in 2003—a full four years before the debut of the iPhone—a young product manager at the BBC, Alex Pressland, had just finished leading a product effort that enabled the BBC to be one of the first media companies in the world to syndicate content. Most people at the BBC had no idea why this was important or even desirable, but Alex understood that this enabling technology could be used in new and unanticipated ways to increase the BBC's reach, a major part of the institution's mission.
Because Alex understood the potential for IP‐based syndicated content technology, she started searching for new and useful ways to put this technology to use. She began by looking at people in the United Kingdom who were not being reached by the BBC's conventional broadcast media (TVs and radios in homes and cars).
One early use she identified was large electronic billboard screens in many city center venues that were capable of displaying video. But she observed that these venues were just playing the same thing you could watch on your television at home, even though the context and audience was very different.
So, Alex proposed a series of experiments in which she would have editorial teams assemble specific tailored content suitable for specific venues and audiences, and then she would measure the audience reach and engagement.
While this might sound obvious today, at the time this was a very foreign concept to the BBC's broadcast journalism culture. There was a long list of obstacles in trying to push the BBC in this direction, not the least of which was editorial and legal.
Editorial wasn't used to the model in which content would be created and then delivered in different contexts. This gets to the heart of the BBC editorial culture and required considerable persuasion to show why this was a very good thing for both the BBC and for the audience.
Legal wasn't used to distribution via IP‐enabled devices. Imagine the stack of content‐licensing agreements that would need to be updated or renegotiated.
The results of Alex's experiments and early successes, however, gave her the confidence to propose to BBC leadership a new product vision and strategy which she called “BBC Out of Home.”
It's important to note that she did this as an individual contributor product manager.
This work ended up fueling a dramatic shift at the BBC—from broadcast content to content distribution—and this work dramatically affected reach and soon became the basis for BBC's mobile efforts. Today, more than 50 million people around the world depend on BBC's mobile offerings every week.
With large enterprise companies, it's never easy to drive substantial change, but this is exactly what strong product managers figure out how to do.
This is not just a story about applying technology to solve problems; it's also a story about the power of force of will. With large enterprise companies, it's never easy to drive substantial change, but this is exactly what strong product managers figure out how to do.
Alex went on from the BBC to have a terrific career at several tech and media companies and now is a product leader in New York.