We wanted to balance the timeliness of filmamkers capturing never-before-filmed behavior (captured in 2024) while not having too much of a long lead ahead of the "Secrets of the Penguins" show premiering in 2025. This piece was meant to spark awe, wonder, joy, and excitement leading up to Secrets of the Penguins.This video was created for 9x16 social platforms, garnering shares, reposts and engagements from existing Nat Geo audiences and newcomers who find this video on their explore feeds.
We worked closely with Bertie Gregory who filmed the behavior to provide facts about the penguins and his perspective on what capturing that moment was like in the caption. We worked closely with Bertie to identify the strongest opening clip from all the longer footage available so we really captured audience attention within the first second. We knew we needed to lead with a short moment of suspense, quickly followed by the insanely high jump the first penguin chick took.
This video is one of Nat Geo's highest performing videos across platforms ever, garnering 165M views and 8.9M engagements across platforms. It is our highest performing TikTok to date. It went viral—with creators mentioning and reacting to it and new outlets picking it up.
