BBH amps up Season 4 of Netflix's Stranger Things with immersive event

BBH expands the Stranger Things show for diehard fans through A Slice of the Upside Down experience.

By Creative Salon

31 May 2022

The experience was part of a wider campaign from Netflix and BBH, covering multiple touchpoints and media, from traditional OOH, to immersive theatre, and even new pizza flavour creations.

Those lucky enough to track down the portal, found a rift, leading to the Upside Down and a terrifying Surfer Boy Pizza restaurant at the end of a 17m creepy tunnel. The Upside Down restaurant was packed with easter eggs for the fans to discover, and included a retro photo booth to capture the scary experience forever. Pizza waiters stuck in the Upside Down gave visitors an exclusive pizza, named the Demogorgonzola, designed to look like the terrifying open head of the show’s monster.

While the pizza might look like a demogorgon, luckily for fans it tasted delicious. Beyond the experience fans could also snag this limited edition pizza from an authentic vintage Surfer Boy Pizza van travelling around London over the weekend of the launch.

During the week leading up to the launch of the activation, Netflix and BBH teased Stranger Things fans with an OOH campaign filled with cryptic clues and teasers leading up to the launch of the live experience, with every single detail true to Stranger Things, from vintage paper stock to retro Pepsi clocks. The OOH ran across sites in London and featured the work of legendary 80s surf artist Phil Roberts.

One poster advertised ‘Surfer Boy Pizza’, the pizza delivery service which was revealed in S4 trailers for Stranger Things. It appeared to have come directly from 1986, thanks to Roberts’ use of a real airbrush rather than a computer, and contains a peculiar phone number. Other OOH executions included one promoting holidays in Lenora Hills, California – the series’ fictional setting; a message from Hawkins Power and Light; a vintage clock ad, and even an ad for Rink-O-Mania.

Each poster featured hints about what to expect in the new episodes of Stranger Things, and combined pointed fans to the existence of the real-world experience. People paying close enough attention even got the chance to see a portal between this world and the Upside Down open up right in front of their eyes.

Clock Poster: The copy ends with the word zero and no full stop, followed by an American phone number (to stay authentic to the show). But add the zero, and you get a UK number. Phone the number and you get a creepy surprise! A Surfer Boy Pizza employee is interrupted by a creepy call for help from the upside down, a countdown and the location of the rift in Shoreditch.

Lenora Hills poster: The copy contains some irregular capitalised words 'Realm' and 'Peached', this isn't bad grammar, it's an anagram for Dereham Place - the location of the rift.

Rink O Mania, Surfer Boy, Hawkins Power, Cassette posters: The phone numbers are coordinates that combined give you the rift location. The cassette model number is a coordinate, hidden in the corner.

There are also tonnes of easter eggs across the posters, including blood splattered roller skates, dice earrings, blood red water, ominous shadows, demogorgon victims and deadly palm trees.

Campaign credits:

Netflix Marketing Director, UK Scripted Series: Chris Hooper

Netflix Global Creative Marketing Manager: Aaron Lynch

Netflix Scripted Series Creative Marketing Manager: Kristy Holland

Netflix UK Marketing Creative Producers: Marisa Brickman and Becky Bell

Netflix Original Series Publicity, Europe: Kate Bain

PR Agency: Organic

Advertising Agency: BBH

CCO: Alex Grieve

Executive Creative Director: Helen Rhodes

Chief Production Officer: Stephen Ledger-Lomas

Creative Director: Adam Newby And Dillah Zakbah