For National Geographic (or Nat Geo, for short), April is Earth Month, the Super Bowl of the natural science brand’s year. In 2026, it worked to simplify, activate and expand its brand with the message of “wonder.”

“We really tried to simplify our messaging this year,” said Meagan Sanders, senior vice president, brand and franchise, National Geographic, The Walt Disney Company. “Because Earth Month is our Super Bowl, there is always this pressure to do so much. This year, we thought about the one thing we wanted to stand for during Earth Month. And that one thing was ‘wonder.’ It’s a unifying, simple, optimistic theme that feels very of the brand and of the moment. We were really able to pull through a multi-dimensional campaign in response to that one single truth.” 

Nat Geo, a 138-year-old brand, has some specific and well established brand attributes: curiosity, exploration and optimism, among them. For the current team, “wonder” incorporated all of those attributes while also inspiring action.

“We were really thinking about the journey of curiosity,” said Sanders. “Our goal at Nat Geo is to inspire the explorer in everyone. If we work backwards from that, exploration is a byproduct of curiosity, and curiosity often needs to be triggered. It is often in those small moments where you spot something and you're caught by it. It catches your breath, or it makes you think, but why? Those moments of wonder, those sources of curiosity, they just felt like the origin story of our vision for the brand.”

In this highly fragmented media world, it also makes sense to distill a brand down to its simplest essence as it reaches out across linear, digital and social platforms. “We’ve got 1.2 billion followers on social across an incredible number of platforms in a huge number of markets. Reining all of those disparate teams together and getting them to work off the same page means we’ve got to keep it incredibly simple,” Sanders said.

Once the team decided upon “wonder” as the unifying brand concept, they then tied it to a tagline, “Step Into Wonder.” Nat Geo’s marketing team worked with a copywriting team at UK-based W Communications to develop the concept.

“We often get the feedback that people have Nat Geo on in the background but they are not necessarily actively engaging with it,” Sanders said. “We really wanted to make sure that the word 'wonder' inspired action-oriented engagement.”

Inspiring Action

With those goals in mind, the team put together multiple events and activations to celebrate Earth Month, including:

– A dedicated Earth Month collection on Disney+ featuring such National Geographic content as Ocean with David Attenborough (2025), Cheetahs Up Close with Bertie Gregory (2026) and the second season of A Real Bug’s Life (2025). 

– Two new series premieres: 

Nat Geo’s new docu-series Secrets of the Bees (2026), narrated by Nat Geo Explorer Bertie Gregory, which also was featured on the cover of April’s National Geographic Magazine:

And Disneynature’s Orangutan, narrated by Josh Gad (Frozen, Book of Mormon):

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– “The Wonder List” digital hub on NatGeo.com and companion kids’ series on YouTube, featuring prompts, videos and weekly themes designed to encourage families to get out and explore nature firsthand. 

– A large-scale experiential takeover at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles that invited guests to discover and explore the environment through the literal yellow brand frame of Nat Geo. The activation kicked off with a preview of the weeklong activation, hosted by actress Piper Curda (voice of Mabel in Disney and Pixar’s Hoppers); a Q&A with Nat Geo Explorer Dr. Sammy Ramsey (Secrets of the Bees producer and lead scientist), and hands-on experiences like a honey tasting.

– Its third annual Earth Month sweepstakes, giving fans the opportunity to win a trip with National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions to either Alaska or the Galápagos Islands.

Finally, it curated an ambient and meditative livestream featuring Earth Moods episodes and “Earth Moods: Frequencies Vol. 1” by Maejor. The experience streamed 24/7 all month on Nat Geo’s YouTube channel with special Earth Day (April 22)  livestreams on Facebook and TikTok.

Earth Month runs from April 1 - April 30 on Disney+ and Nat Geo platforms, with Earth Day taking place on Wednesday, April 22. But to a large extent, every day is Earth Day for Disney’s well-established natural science platform. 

As Sir David Attenborough concludes in the trailer,”It’s life at its most mesmerizing.”