National Geographic unveiling the hidden mysteries of elephants
Key Art | Advertising | Digital
We created key art, platform artwork, and a digital and an OOH advertising campaign for the new installment of National Geographic’s groundbreaking “Secrets of” franchise, Secrets of the Elephants. This powerful series takes a close look at elephants’ communities, culture, and complex emotions.
CHALLENGE
Building on the success of our work for the first chapter of this award-winning franchise, Secrets of the Whales, we were tasked with creating sophisticated art that captured the elegant essence of the series’ elephant subjects. It was also important for the art we created for Secrets of the Elephants to be an organic, cohesive progression of the franchise.
INSIGHT
Secrets of the Elephants captures the nuanced emotional lives and communal culture of elephants, highlighting how similar they are to us. To emphasize this commonality, we decided to showcase their wise, loving nature with simple, intimate portraits of elephants in the wild.
APPROACH
As in our art for Secrets of the Whales, we put Nat Geo’s animal subjects front and center, opting for close-up images and a natural treatment for this installment of the “Secrets of” franchise. This approach allowed the elephant subjects’ presence and poise to speak for itself.
EXECUTION
Leveraging the iconic Nat Geo brand, we used striking images of the series’ elephant subjects in their natural habitats all around the world to create key art and an array of platform art for the show.
We set Nat Geo’s elephants loose in New York, bringing them to life with an animated supersign billboard in Times Square featuring the key art we designed alongside the series’ trailer. This activation brought Times Square visitors face to face with the impressive stars of the series.
We integrated the series into potential audiences’ daily lives through a branded in-app Weather Channel experience. Incorporating iconic Nat Geo branding and striking frames from the series, the imagery of this activation shifted based on the user’s actual current weather conditions.
