For using his business to tell stories

When Greg Hemmings, the principal of Hemmings House Pictures (HHP), learned that one of his most successful shows had popped up illegally on a Japanese version of YouTube, he rolled with the punches. Instead of calling his lawyer, Hemmings (pictured above right) Tweeted his followers. He turned the attack on his IP into an opportunity to connect with his audience. “Hi Twitter friends,” he wrote. “Please add nonsense remarks to this website that has graciously pirated our TV show, Kardinal Sinners.”

A torrent was unleashed. Within hours, tens of thousands of words—including Frank McKenna’s biography, the Roman penal code, and an essay on copyright law—were dumped onto the Japanese site. The episode didn’t come down, but Hemmings turned even that to his advantage. Many of the pranksters pressed play to get a sneak peak at the show, which is airing on the specialty channel Rush HD, giving it a pre-premiere bump.

These days, everybody in television is looking for any little bump. “Times are tough in the industry,” wrote Hemmings in the fall. “The HHP team got together in October to figure out our future. We decided to re-shift the business model to a contractor base. This will help us get paid to do what we do best—create and tell people’s stories.”

They do it well, too. Last summer a documentary Hemmings made about an Inuit boy growing up within an environment in flux won a Commonwealth Vision Award. Then he was chosen to produce the first all-Internet telecast of the East Coast Music Awards. And in January his brother Mark, who has built a successful commercial-photography business in the Far East, joined Hemmings House; now they have offices in Saint John, Halifax, and Tokyo.

Perhaps the real key to Hemmings’ ongoing success is his vibrant personality. Who wouldn’t want to do business with someone who writes this on his blog: “The plane is very small, and we just broke through the clouds. Coming up out of a dreary and grey day through a puff of white, then into a land of sunshine with billows of marshmallows and white cotton candy below!”