Creative content is key to producing a good online brand.(IPC, Emap cut back on new media)(Brief Article)

It's no surprise that both IPC and Emap are slashing their new-media investment at a time when the media industry is desperately trying to make savings. But it's depressing news nevertheless.

Anyone trying to access IPC's BeMe. com, for example, will now find a rather heart-felt farewell message instead of the usual guff--although the toe-curlingly trite tone of the site survived till the last: "It's been a real pleasure delivering an honest, funny, sexy website for you lot--the most stylish and passionate women on the web."

And sorry, BeMe fans, but if you'd signed up for the e-mail service you're buggered because that's gone, too. Which will probably leave a rather bitter tinge in the mouths of users.

But at least IPC doesn't have to worry about any of those negative vibes damaging the rest of its business, which ironically is perhaps one of the key reasons why BeMe ultimately failed. It's not as though there is a sister, offline BeMe brand that will suffer from letting down its web users like this. But then if there had been an existing BeMe brand for IPC to leverage online, the combined product might have been strong enough to ride the dotcom downturn.

As the past year has proved, establishing an online consumer brand completely from scratch, even with a sizeable ad budget, is a crippling challenge that few have met. Odd, then, that IPC--with so many relevant existing ...