"Brands are becoming commissioners": Bryony Hopkins on the creator economy's production gap

The creator economy has spent years mastering how to grow audiences. The harder question now is what happens behind the scenes – who coordinates the shoot, who manages the edit review, who makes sure the content due on Tuesday actually goes live on Tuesday.

It is a gap Bryony Hopkins, who has notched stints at the BBC, LADbible and FlightStory, has spent more than a decade watching open up. This month she launched Bryony Ink, a consultancy working with creator businesses, traditional broadcasters and brands on the systems their content operations need to function.

"If you haven't thought about those things upstream, it will break downstream at some point," she told The Daily Influence.

The challenge, she says, is the pace at which digital-first content now gets made – and the volume it generates.

"You might be delivering 12 episodes for YouTube, three clips per episode," Hopkins said. "You can end up delivering hundreds of pieces of content quite easily."

Unlike traditional productions, creators stay involved throughout – in the ideation, the filming, the edit review – while platforms reward those who publish consistently.

"The speed at which we're moving is quicker than that old production model can handle," she said.

Borrowing from TV

Television spent decades building the infrastructure that makes large-scale content production work – unions, editorial processes, health and safety procedures and established commissioning structures.

Hopkins argues that while digital media never had that runway, the people trained inside those systems did, and they are exactly what the creator economy needs.

She pointed to a project she worked on for Tourism Ireland and Channel 4, where she brought in a TV director who had spent years making travel documentaries for broadcast. The format was digital, the timeline was tight, but the creative ambition required someone with that specific experience behind them.

"When you're executing a travelogue, you really want the best travelogue director who's just going to make it sing," she said. "We needed that specific skill set."

It is a case she makes more broadly to the many producers, journalists and directors currently navigating a contracting traditional media industry.

"The digital industry needs TV experience," Hopkins said. "Some of the best people I've hired have come from TV."

It is an argument she is putting into practice, with training work upcoming at the BBC and the National Film and Television School.

For those considering the move, she argues genre expertise is the entry point. Every specialism has an audience online.

"If people can't see you, they can't find you," she said.

'Brands as commissioners'

The biggest shift Hopkins identifies is on the brand side of the industry.

Companies including JD Sports and Footasylum have moved significant marketing budget into building YouTube channels that function more like media properties than advertising campaigns. Tinder has launched its own dating format. PrettyLittleThing is moving in the same direction.

"Brands as commissioners" is the phrase Hopkins uses. Running a content channel is a fundamentally different proposition to running a campaign, and one that most marketing departments were not built for.

Hopkins believes that gap will only widen as more companies decide they want to own their audiences rather than rent them from platforms.