Our Story

Port Side was born on a mountain bike trail with a 480p camera and a couple of friends riding hardtails in Bellingham, Washington. Editing away on a 2009 MacBook Pro with iMovie, I realized that filmmaking provided an outlet to craft feeling through the video medium. Inspired by our proximity to the ocean and fueled by this novel idea that filmmaking could induce feeling, Port Side was born.

Knowing what we didn’t know, we started The Backcountry Marketing Podcast to interview industry leaders to better understand the landscape, upstream and downstream, of production. Our goal was to try and answer the question: "what makes video content work?"

Five years and more than 200 episodes later, that pursuit fundamentally changed our company.

Today, Port Side operates as a content strategy studio that helps outdoor brands create relevance, recognition and an audience.

We believe the brands winning today aren’t just making content. They’re building media ecosystems rooted in a strong point of view, emotional relevance, and a deep understanding of their audience.

- Cole Heilborn
Creative Director

Our Services

Content Strategy, Production, Distribution

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Organic Content Strategy
Consulting Strategy
Full Service
360 campaigns

Organic Content Strategy

We help outdoor brands uncover their unique point of view and translate it into organic content people actually want to watch. The result is a content system that earn attention, build trust, and grow an audience all while spending less on paid media.

Stop engaging with your audience in seasonal campaigns, and start showing up and providing value every day that builds a durable audience.

Most brands aren't ignored because they lack great products, they're ignored because they're forgettable. We help brands develop a distinct point of view and translate it into content that people instantly recognize, remember, and associate with the brand.

5% of buyers are in the market today. The brands that win tomorrow are the ones building relationships before a purchase decision is ever made. By consistently showing up with relevant content, brands stay top-of-mind until the moment someone is ready to buy.

Consulting Strategy

Cole Heilborn is the founder of Port Side and host of the Backcountry Marketing Podcast. Over the last decade, he's helped brands like Athletic Brewing, Garmin, Mammut, Specialized, and SRAM tell stories through film and content. Today, he works with brands as a strategic advisor, helping them uncover what makes them unique, develop a clear point of view, and build content strategies that create relevance, recognition, and long-term growth.

Most marketing teams aren't struggling because they lack ideas, they're struggling because they have too many.

Every brand faces an endless stream of decisions: where to invest, what content to create, which opportunities to pursue, and which to ignore. Through ongoing consulting, Cole provides an outside perspective grounded in research, industry insights, and real-world experience.

Cole has spent hundreds of hours studying what works in the outdoor industry through our work and conversations with leading marketers. Instead of learning everything through trial and error, clients gain access to those insights and a trusted partner who can help them avoid costly mistakes.

Full Service

Our full-service engagement combines audience research, strategy, creative development, production, and distribution into a unified system designed to help brands become more relevant, recognizable, and memorable. We produce campaigns, branded entertainment, product launches, and social content

We begin by identifying the outcomes that matter most, whether that's building awareness, increasing consideration, launching a product or growing an audience.

The best content starts with empathy. Through research, interviews, and audience analysis, we uncover what your audience cares about, what challenges they face, and what earns their attention.

We develop creative ideas and content strategies that connect your brand's unique point of view with your audience's interests, creating content people actually want to watch, read, and share.

360 campaigns

A great film is only the beginning. Our 360° Impact Campaigns are designed to maximize the return on every story by transforming a single film into a complete content ecosystem. We develop distribution strategies, atomized content, community engagement initiatives, partnerships, and supporting assets that extend the life of the story and increase its impact.

Most films are treated like a single asset. We treat them like a content engine. Through strategic atomization, we transform one story into dozens, or hundreds, of pieces of content tailored to different audiences, platforms, and moments.

Even The best story fails if nobody sees it. We develop distribution plans that leverage owned channels, earned media, creators, partners, communities, and paid amplification to ensure the story finds the audience it was created for.

We design campaigns that capture attention and convert it into lasting relationships through audience building, community engagement, email growth, partnerships, events, products, and other revenue-generating opportunities.

Our Vision

We envision a future where outdoor brands are creating emotionally resonant media that drives business outcomes. Their content is distinct, creative, creates fans, plays in culture, touches the depths of humanity, and builds an authentic connection between brand and audience that is unshakeable.

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Team

We don’t believe in one-size-fits-all production. Every project gets a handpicked crew of seasoned experts who know your world, many of whom have shared their insights on our podcast. You’ll get exactly what you need to bring your story to life. Nothing more. Nothing less. Already have internal video team? We can work with them too.

Cole Heilborn

Founder | Creative Director

Spencer Astra

Cinematographer

Liz Astra

Editor

Joseph Cunningham

Podcast Editor & Producer

Emily Holland

Producer

Riley Seebeck

Photographer

Be quick to listen, slow to speak

Give the audience a reason to care

Lead with empathy

Goal first, story second

Ask harder questions

Bellingham, WA
360.383.7721
cole@portsidepro.com
Proud member of The Conservation Alliance