How to Build a Behind the Scenes Content Strategy for a Multi Brand Adventure Project
How to Build a Behind the Scenes Content Strategy for a Multi Brand Adventure Project
A Strategy Has to Exist Before the Trip Starts
Seven days of solo shooting across Mount Lassen and Mount Shasta could easily have produced a disorganized pile of footage without a clear plan behind it. Instead, this project was built from the start as a behind the scenes storytelling effort for three brand clients, Big Agnes, Crazy Creek, and Out There, and that framing shaped every decision I made about what to capture and how to think about it once I was back home editing.
I want to walk through how I actually built that strategy, because a lot of people think about content strategy as something that happens after a trip, sorting through what you got and figuring out how to use it. On a project this demanding, waiting until afterward to think strategically is too late. The strategy has to guide the shooting itself, or you end up with beautiful footage that does not actually tell the story anyone needs.
Starting With What Behind the Scenes Actually Means
Behind the scenes content is not just footage of the process instead of the finished result. It is a specific kind of honesty, showing the parts of a project that usually get cut out of a polished final piece. The mistake that costs you an hour and a half. The extra load you have to carry because you underestimated the first one. The moment you turn around a few hundred feet from a summit because the conditions are telling you something you need to listen to.
I built this project around the assumption that those unglamorous moments were not failures to hide. They were the actual content. That mindset shift matters enormously, because it changes what you point a camera at in the field. Instead of only capturing the beautiful summit shot, you also capture the exhausted photographer setting up a tripod at three in the morning with cold hands, because that moment tells a more complete and more useful story for a brand trying to connect with real outdoor consumers.
Mapping Content to Each Brand Without Losing the Bigger Story
With three separate clients involved, the strategy also had to account for how content would eventually get sorted and distributed to each of them individually, while still functioning as one coherent seven day narrative. I thought about this in layers. The overall arc of the trip, from leaving South Lake Tahoe through the final pack out on Shasta, formed the spine of the story. Within that spine, specific moments naturally aligned with specific brands based on what gear was actually in use at the time.
Product shots at Manzanita Lake and in the rain on day two served certain needs. The gear prep and load management heading into the two night Shasta push served others, especially once the second load became part of the story. Keeping this mapping in mind while shooting meant I was not just collecting general footage and hoping it would sort itself out later. Every day had both a personal narrative purpose and a specific brand purpose, and thinking about both simultaneously kept the whole project organized despite happening entirely solo.
I also thought about pacing across the full week rather than treating each day as an isolated shoot. Early days leaned more toward establishing the journey itself, the drive, the van life routine, the first approach to Lassen. Later days carried more of the weight for each brand's specific product needs, since by then I understood the terrain and my own rhythm well enough to shoot more efficiently. That pacing was not rigid, but having a rough sense of it kept the whole seven days from feeling like five unrelated shoots stitched together.
I also thought hard about how each brand would eventually want to use this material beyond a single post or campaign. Behind the scenes footage tends to have a longer shelf life than a single polished hero shot, since it can be recut, resequenced, and reused across different platforms and different moments long after the trip itself is over. Building the strategy with that longevity in mind changed how carefully I documented smaller transitional moments that might have seemed unimportant in isolation.
Planning for the Moments You Cannot Predict
No strategy survives a real seven day trip without adjustment, and this one certainly did not. A closed park entrance on day two added an unplanned hour and a half of driving. A rescue situation near The Thumb on summit day, which I helped coordinate as a Wilderness First Responder, was never part of any plan and could not have been. A strategy that only works when everything goes according to schedule is not really a strategy at all. It is a wish list.
What actually made this project's strategy work was building in enough flexibility to absorb the unexpected without losing the overall thread. When the rescue happened, I did not try to force it into a pre planned content bucket. I let it exist as its own honest part of the story, handled with real restraint given the privacy of the people involved, while still continuing to serve the underlying goal of showing what a real solo alpine project actually involves.
Why Small, Honest Moments Became the Backbone
Looking back at the full seven days, the strategy that actually worked was not built around chasing the most spectacular possible shots. It was built around collecting a complete, honest record of what the trip actually required, physically and logistically, and trusting that honesty would resonate more than a highlight reel ever could. The second carry into Horse Camp. The boot pack on Lassen with snow sinking waist deep. The tired, quiet moments in the van doing admin work between bigger shoots.
Those moments became the backbone precisely because they were relatable in a way that only the summit shot never could be. Most people watching this content will never climb Mount Shasta. Almost everyone watching has had a day where their plan fell apart and they had to adjust on the fly. Building the strategy around that shared human experience, rather than around spectacle alone, is what made this behind the scenes approach actually connect.
What I Would Tell Someone Building a Similar Strategy
If you are planning a multi brand adventure project, decide before you leave what honesty actually means for your specific trip, and commit to it even when the honest moment is not flattering. Map your content to each client's needs in advance, but leave real room for the unexpected, because the unexpected is often where the most valuable material comes from.
Most importantly, do not treat behind the scenes content as a lesser version of the polished final result. On this project, the unglamorous moments were not a compromise. They were the entire point, and building a strategy that protected space for them, even on the hardest and most chaotic days, is what turned seven days in the mountains into a story worth telling for three different brands at once.
Dalton Johnson is a commercial photographer and director of photography based in South Lake Tahoe, California. Over the last decade he has worked with brands including Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, and Big Agnes across all seven continents. He documents adventure, travel, and the outdoors through photography, film, and writing. Follow along at dalton-johnson.com.