Case Study

Stranger Things S4 | Netflix

Trailer Park Group has served as a partner to Netflix since the launch of Stranger Things. With Season 4 facing pandemic-related delayed production, we sustained the hungry fan community over three years. Our strategy was to create content pieces across social that allowed the story, characters, and world of the Stranger Things franchise to remain relevant and alive among its diehard fans and beyond. This season, we expanded the world of Stranger Things beyond Hawkins with a series of targeted trailers and spots, along with brand partnerships, custom content, social content, and more.

Past Seasons

We’ve been fortunate to be Netflix’s partners on Stranger Things since the beginning to establish the series as a franchise. Our creative strategy centered around the idea of marketing the series as though it had a cult following from day one: Inside Out Marketing. Our campaign strategy was to serve the appetites of insatiable superfans who would be dissecting every element of the series, and to provide cues to a broad audience that the series was a must-watch. You can see more work from our past seasons here.

Brand Guide

Leading into Season 4, we worked with the Netflix long-lead planning team to develop a comprehensive reference tool for the Stranger Things universe, designed to sustain the release beyond the new series launch and into a multi-layered ecosystem.

Season 4 Announcement

After our Season 4 announcement declared “we’re not in Hawkins anymore,” we released four location teasers to expand the world of Stranger Things. Watch the videos here.

Trailers

For the first time, Netflix would release the series in two parts, which required us to have a strategic approach to the trailers. Music became the driving force that pulled at the emotional connection of the show. Our first trailer evoked the nostalgia of the series with the use of a custom remix of “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” by Journey.

Leading into the final showdown of Part 2, we anticipated the emotional connection fans would have with “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush and developed a custom remix of the song for the part 2 trailer.

Social Creative

We drove viewership around the split season and beyond with custom social content, including behind-the-scenes and franchise pieces, that focused on iconic elements of Season 4 including the clock, Vecna, Eddie Munson, and many other key characters and visual references people know and love about Stranger Things.

Partnerships

We collaborated with Netflix to execute a custom spot for a partnership with Domino’s. Our spot posed the question, “what if you could order pizza with your mind?” encouraging users to download Domino’s mind ordering app which uses facial recognition and eye-tracking technology to allow test subjects to use their “powers” to order pizza.

We worked together with their events production partner to promote the Stranger Things Drive-Into experience.

And most recently, we supported the announcement of the Stranger Things VR game, which will put players in Vecna’s shoes, launching in winter 2023.

Results

With over 10 billion impressions, 29.7 million global tweets and retweets, and Season 4 becoming the most-watched English-language Netflix series of all time, it’s safe to say the integrated marketing campaign turned the world upside down.

Netflix won the Clio Grand for the Season 4 campaign and we won Clio Gold for the video campaign.