Creative Leigh Goulding

— PROJECT NAME

History Helmet

— ROLE

Script Writer

Researcher

Actor

Editor

— DATE

March 2025 to present

I wanted to create a character for the Sky History TikTok to make it more interesting for our audience, to have it feel like someone was really there talking to them and teaching them about fun facts from history in a way that felt native to the platform.

I used the History branded suit of armour to create a character, inspired by The Pub Landlord, Rattus Rattus from Horrible Histories and Robin Hood, a well know history Tiktokker, to create a character that was relatable and able to talk to our audience in a down-to-earth manner.

I’ve used this character to explore a few different ideas, to see what works best with our audience, from Top 5's, answering questions posed by other TikTokkers and fun facts around events that happened that week in History.

Top 4 – British Castles

Sir Henry’s most popular video to date, gaining over 14.8k views. I worked with the Tiktok pages of various British castles to promote them to our Sky History viewers, with a CTA to follow and visit them IRL. I chose a range of following sizes so that the smaller ones would get a boost from the larger by resharing the video to their own pages. It really showed that Sky History stood by it’s manta ‘History is Alive’.

0:00

History Helmets – Henry 8th jousting disaster.

I tried out a new format called History Helmets, showcasing disastrous stories that went down in history. I did the “Big Budget Re-enactments” in character as if Sir Henry was doing his best amateur dramatics show for his followers, to keep it light and entertaining.

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Top 5 – Viking Names

In these Top 5's I try and not put the most obvious choice (Ragnar) at number one, hoping to get a bit of a debate going around them. I also ask if I missed anyone out, to gain further interactivity from the community.