Ep 287: From Snowboarding Injury to Global Brand Storytelling with Darren Rayner

About this episode

Damien Swaby interviews Darren Rayner about the impact of action-sports filmmaking on social media storytelling and brand content strategies.

🧾 Episode Show Notes In this episode, Damien sits down with filmmaker and creative studio founder Darren Rayner to explore how action-sports filmmaking shaped modern social media storytelling — and how brands can scale content without losing their voice. Darren discusses: 🎬 The origin of Magnafire Why a serious snowboarding accident changed his career direction Moving from athlete to filmmaker Building a studio focused on outdoor sport and wellness storytelling Transitioning from feature-length action-sports films to short-form digital content 📱 Social-first storytelling for brands What brands still misunderstand about TikTok and Instagram video Why discovery strategy comes before production Helping organisations grow audiences without losing authenticity Turning brand identity into performance-driven social content 📈 Scaling audiences on social platforms Growing Arc’teryx from zero to hundreds of thousands of TikTok followers Balancing trend-driven content with long-term brand positioning Why social storytelling shouldn’t feel like advertising 🧗 Filming athletes and working with global brands Producing content with limited access windows (sometimes just 25 minutes) Why…

People in this episode

Host: Damien Swaby

Guest: Darren Rayner

Topics covered

• action-sports filmmaking
• social media storytelling
• brand content strategy
• audience growth
• documentary filmmaking

Keywords

• snowboarding
• social-first storytelling
• TikTok
• Instagram
• audience growth
• branded filmmaking
• documentary
• content strategy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Magnafire, Arc’teryx, Red Bull

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