Frontiers North Adventures Streamlines Creative Workflow and Boosts ROI with Centralized Asset Management

A Legacy of Sustainable Adventures in Canada’s North

For over 30 years, Frontiers North Adventures has offered sustainable adventure experiences in Canada’s North. They specialize in small group expeditions that highlight the subarctic’s beauty. As their business grew, managing the vast amount of visual content became challenging. This is how they used PhotoShelter’s digital asset management platform to streamline workflows, improve collaboration, and enhance their visual content’s impact.

The Challenge: Disjointed Content Management

Alex Cupeiro, the Marketing and Communications Coordinator at Frontiers North Adventures, wears many hats. Her daily workflow includes creating marketing materials, managing social media, and collaborating with teams to highlight the company’s adventures. Alex faced challenges managing the company’s extensive visual content library.

• Disorganized storage & fragmented systems. There was no content control, with team members using various tools like WeTransfer and Dropbox. There was also no standard way to organize content. Alex said, “One of my first projects was moving everything to PhotoShelter. It was a big improvement from just keeping things on the server.”
• Difficulty collaborating. Sharing content with other teams and external partners was messy. Finding the right files was hard, and using email or various file-sharing services made it tough to ensure everyone had the latest versions.
• Missing usage rights & creator credit information. The team struggled with proper attribution for content creators they work with every day. Alex said, “We had many photos stored without information on who took them, when, or the usage rights. We didn’t know what permissions we had, making the photos not very useful.”

“It was a big challenge… our pictures come from many different sources. We have all sorts of staff with boots on the ground. They get these incredible moments, and we want to be able to take those photos, share them, use them, and keep them on hand. Sometimes people were emailing photos, sometimes they were sending them via WeTransfer or Dropbox. Before that, they were sorting them on our server and they were labeled incorrectly. It’s pretty impossible to find what you’re looking for. I think a lot got lost before we started using PhotoShelter.”

Alex Cupeiro, Marketing and Communications Coordinator

The Solution: Boosting Collaboration and ROI with PhotoShelter

Before PhotoShelter, Frontiers North Adventures had no clear way to organize and manage their content from different sources. Time was wasted on searches, and the team couldn’t focus on more valuable work. Here’s how PhotoShelter helped Alex and team improve collaboration and streamline workflows:

• A centralized, well-tagged library. All content is now in one place, easily searchable with specific keywords and metadata. Alex said, “One of the biggest benefits of using PhotoShelter is time. We save so much time we used to spend searching through poorly-labeled folders. Now, with PhotoShelter, we just type in what we need, and it’s there instantly. It’s much faster.”
• Enhanced permissions for collaborator access. PhotoShelter provides specific permission settings and secure galleries, ensuring proper access while locking other content. Alex said, “Now [the photo crediting problem] is solved. We can attach photographer credit, copyright, and usage notes, making it clear for everyone. It’s perfect.”
• Analytics prove ROI. PhotoShelter Analytics tracks which pictures are downloaded the most. Alex said, “I often check which pictures are popular. Seeing download logs helps us know if partners are accessing and using the content. It’s been super helpful.”

“Batch editing metadata has been a big game changer, being able to apply everything all at once is very nice…. And the FileFlow app has been useful in a pinch. When I’ve been out and about and needed to download a picture, it’s been great being able to have that mobile access.”

Alex Cupeiro, Marketing and Communications Coordinator

Empowering Collaboration with PhotoShelter

PhotoShelter has greatly improved efficiency and collaboration at Frontiers North Adventures. The team no longer spends time hunting for visuals; they now use a centralized system that acts like a personalized search engine for all their photos.

“[PhotoShelter] is like your own personal search engine for all your pictures. You don’t have to really worry about where you put something or anything like that. You can simply type in what you need and it’s gonna bring it right to you.”

Alex Cupeiro, Marketing and Communications Coordinator

Cover image by Mike Gere / all images provided by Frontiers North Adventures