Helping brands become publishers

September 2026

What launching an online TV channel taught me about brand-funded storytelling.

Back in 2007, Digitom’s Tom Chown helped launch Kent TV, operated by Bob Geldof’s Ten Alps, now Zinc Media, and recognised as Europe’s first publicly funded online streamed television channel. It launched just weeks before BBC iPlayer, when the idea that people would regularly choose to watch television online felt experimental, exciting and full of possibility.

For almost two and a half years, we created short-form news, current affairs and entertainment content, featuring people and organisations across Kent. Audiences were still moving from dial-up internet to ADSL and every second of video had to earn its place, which meant the guiding principle was simple – each film should be as long as it remains interesting.

Before Kent TV, I worked at the BBC, moving between news, current affairs and the early digital teams creating video content for online audiences.

In 2004, the regional digital team had just four people, compared with more than 120 colleagues across television and radio. That experience offered an early glimpse of how quickly on-demand video and emerging streaming platforms would reshape the way people discovered, watched and shared stories.

Nearly two decades later, the platforms have changed beyond recognition, video now sits in every pocket, audiences build communities around specialist interests, and organisations have a genuine opportunity to publish their own stories with the same care, ambition and editorial discipline that once belonged almost entirely to broadcasters and publishers.

They can become publishers in their own right, building channels of thought, craft and expertise that help people spend more meaningful time with their brand.

That shift is at the heart of brand-funded storytelling, which at its best is useful, well-crafted and editorially generous content that helps a defined audience understand something more clearly: a sector, a craft, a challenge, a community, a product, a service or, most importantly, the people behind it.

We trust people

After almost 30 years working across broadcast television, digital publishing and online video, one lesson has stayed with me: audiences respond when people are given the space to share their own stories, in their own words, because that honesty demonstrates authenticity and helps build trust.

Technology changes, formats change and expectations around pace, distribution and measurement continue to evolve, while human curiosity remains remarkably consistent. We all have a natural curiosity to understand how things work, we respond to expertise, character, honesty and craft, and we connect with genuine people who can share what they know and what they have experienced in their own words.

That is why the strongest brand-funded work begins with genuine people sharing their own stories. They are often the subject experts: the people closest to the work, the decisions, the challenges and the details that matter. Video is so effective because it captures not only what someone says, but how they say it, allowing their personality, values, expertise and care to come through in a way that feels authentic and helps build trust.

YouTube as a platform

When I joined Kent TV, online video was still proving itself.

By 2010, YouTube was beginning to move beyond its early era of shareable clips, commissioning higher-quality broadcast content and positioning the platform as a destination for longer-form viewing.

The creation of YouTube Studios built on that shift, giving emerging creators access to support, training and production space so they could develop specialist channels around their own interests and expertise.

Tom Chown reporting for Kent TV at Chatham Historic Dockyard in Medway, demonstrating how online video journalism helped organisations and communities share authentic stories with digital audiences

YouTube was fast becoming a place for learning, discovery and sustained audience relationships. Audiences were beginning to seek out subjects they cared about, returning to creators, experts and organisations that helped them understand those subjects with depth, clarity and consistency.

For organisations, this points to a more useful way of thinking about video: not just as campaigns or isolated films, but as a publishing channel where expertise can be shared regularly, generously and with purpose.

In that sense, YouTube increasingly resembles a publishing environment built around intent. Audiences arrive because they want to learn, compare, explore or be inspired. Organisations that show up consistently and generously can build familiarity long before a sales conversation begins.

Stories that grow

Trust grows through familiarity, consistency and experience, and when audiences repeatedly encounter people who are knowledgeable, thoughtful and committed to what they do, confidence builds naturally.

Documentary-led, brand-funded storytelling creates the conditions for that to happen. It allows organisations to show rather than simply tell. It gives audiences proof of standards, culture, expertise and intent. And, crucially, it respects the audience by offering something worth watching in its own right.

For me, that is the real promise of brand-funded content: a useful, human and editorially thoughtful way for organisations to share what they know, what they care about and why their work matters.

Kent TV was ahead of its time, and in many ways it pointed towards exactly where we are now, with organisations able to create their own channels, serve their own audiences and build communities around understanding, usefulness and shared interest.

The opportunity is to make storytelling that rewards people’s time, earns their attention and gives them a deeper reason to understand, remember and return to the organisation behind it.

Find out more about our approach to creating brand-funded observational documentary content, designed primarily for online audiences.

Brand funded content

About the author

Tom Chown is an award-winning filmmaker, Founder & Creative Director of Digitom, a production company specialising in people-led factual storytelling. With almost 30 years’ experience creating broadcast, branded and digital content for ambitious organisations across the UK and internationally, Tom brings together editorial judgement, technical craft and a calm, collaborative approach to help clients communicate with clarity, empathy and purpose.

His career began at Landscape Channel Europe, directing and producing short-form music content before joining the BBC, where he worked across live news, online video, investigations and documentary production, including projects filmed in Africa and at the North Pole. He later became Deputy Editor of Kent TV, helping shape one of the UK’s earliest streamed regional channels, before founding Digitom in 2010.

His work has been recognised by industry awards, including Highly Commended honours at the EDF Energy Media Awards and the Royal Television Society, and he continues to contribute to the wider creative sector as an awards judge, advisory board member and advocate for purposeful, human-interest storytelling.

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