Heliconia rides the export wave to expand into new markets
Transcript — Heliconia rides the export wave to expand into new markets
Video length: 00:02:58
[Birds chirping. Aerial view of the main street of a small town in late fall, with a flock of birds flying past a red brick church and landing in a tree.]
Man offscreen: Exporting is at the core of Heliconia. We've been an export company right from, you know, very early days where we would travel internationally to capture unique, beautiful landscapes.
[Gentle guitar music. Aerial views of the small town’s main street. On-screen text: “Creative Export Strategy”, then “Heliconia”. Transitions to a man walking into a two-story off-white house.]
[On-screen text: Brendan Mark, CEO.]
Man offscreen: My name is Brendan Mark. I’m the CEO of Heliconia.
[Brendan seated in the living space of the house, followed by excerpts of Heliconia’s travel and outdoor shows.]
Brendan: The history of Heliconia is rooted around the mission of helping guide people to get outside and give them the inspiration through good quality production content. We'll film our productions anywhere in the world where there's a good story to tell, whether that’s hiking or paddling or a family adventure or culinary. We have a product that we've developed that is appealing to international markets.
[Lively music underscores excerpts from kayaking, travel, hiking, diving and fishing shows, projected against an aerial view of a forested area, followed by footage from inside Heliconia’s office.]
Brendan: We've landed on a model where Heliconia owns the IP of all our content, and we don't give exclusive rights to any one network. And in fact, we retain the commercial rights so that we can look at alternative ways to finance our shows.
[Lively percussion. Excerpts of production crews working on various productions. Transitions to an aerial view of a lake, then to Brendan working in his office and seated near the living room.]
Brendan: So the Creative Export Strategy was very interesting to us because I was looking for different ways that we could grow and expand our business. And I was looking for programs that could help mitigate some of that risk.
[Aerial view of a truck driving down the main street of a small Ontario town.]
Brendan: And for us, this funding was a fantastic opportunity because Heliconia is located in a very small rural town, population of 800. We're able to create some permanent jobs in an economically challenged area.
[Gentle guitar music underscores aerial views of a rural area, which transition to footage of Heliconia staff in their offices, Brendan in the living room and footage from outdoor adventure productions, including hiking, diving, fishing and caving.]
Brendan: We invested heavily on technology that didn't exist in the marketplace. We are building an international audience. And we need to quantify that. This funding gave us the ability to track audiences and the value of what we were doing in international markets. And that in itself has been a critical step for us, creating sustainable growth for the business.
The final part of the Creative Export Strategy was we wanted to take that next step of expanding further in terms of additional markets.
[Brendan and his Heliconia colleagues having coffee in the kitchen interspersed with footage of Brendan in the living room, and from outdoor and travel productions, including tubing, a meeting with an Indigenous group, a family walking through a mountain town and a man scaling a very narrow peak.]
Brendan: We started off with around 20 different network partners, and by the end of the project, we had over 100 different network partners around the globe. We were able to grow our viewership by over 42% to over 224 million viewers, and really that goes along with that mission of inspiring people, getting people outside and, you know, supporting our mission as a company. So it was a great outcome for us – the fact that we could really grow that not just in that one year, but also sustainably. We were able to build on the foundation of the company and continue growing.
[Lively guitar music. Aerial views of a bare tree against a blue sky. On-screen text: Canada.ca/creative-export-strategy. Transitions to the Government of Canada logo.]
Sector: Audiovisual
Location: Beachburg, Ontario
Creative Export Strategy support: Creative Export Canada (CEC) funding
About the company
Heliconia is a Canadian TV and video media company specializing in adventure travel and outdoor sports. Its mission is to promote healthy, active lifestyles by inspiring people to get outdoors through high-quality content.
Founded by elite whitewater kayaker Ken Whiting, along with his business partner Brendan Mark, Heliconia started out producing instructional books and videos on the sport. The company gradually expanded into a broad range of outdoor productions and now produces six travel series which air on networks like Outside TV and the Discovery Channel. Heliconia is also a leader in online video production, with over 100 million YouTube views.
What sets Heliconia apart from other production companies is how it distributes its content. The company provides its shows to multiple networks in exchange for commercial airtime, rather than selling it to individual broadcasters. It then sells that airtime to fund future productions.
The export challenge
While Heliconia’s productions were already available through 20 broadcast partners, the company was ready to expand in key markets like the U.S., the UK, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific. The long-term goal: put those earnings into making bigger and better productions.
To achieve this, Heliconia needed to boost brand awareness in the international tourism and adventure sectors. Goals included doubling discoverability and tripling export revenue within three years.
The export project
With Creative Export Canada (CEC) funding, Heliconia was able to hire a brand sales manager and marketing director, and bring on a programmer to develop an app to track ad revenue. The team pursued major broadcasters and attended global trade shows to secure new partnerships. A robust marketing campaign followed, featuring a video competition, industry ads, and a newsletter targeting outdoor and tourism audiences.
The outcome
Through its CEC-funded project, Heliconia was able to double its staff and exceed its export revenue goal by more than five times. It secured 80 new international broadcast partnerships, including with Discovery Channel USA and dozens of PBS stations, expanding into five new markets across Africa, Europe, and South America.
In addition, Heliconia’s non-U.S. exports grew more than 30-fold. The company also surpassed its total viewership goal by 42%, reaching over 320 million people, and exceeded its digital view target by 77%, hitting 19.5 million views. This growth has positioned Heliconia to take on larger productions with richer storytelling, furthering its mission to get people outside.
Advice for potential exporters
“The Creative Export Canada fund was a chance for us to take the next step, and it helped remove uncertainty with us wanting to grow as a business. But it takes a lot of time to put together a good application. You need to be very clear in terms of what the business need is. Take your time, make sure you have an export-ready product.”