Marketing
19 May 2022
Stranger Things counts down to Season 4 with brand collaborations
Netflix teamed with M·A·C Cosmetics, Dominos and Doritos to promote the hit show.

Netflix teamed with M·A·C Cosmetics, Dominos and Doritos to promote the hit show.
The new season of Stranger Things is coming May 27. But before that, fans can interact with the show while ordering pizza, putting on makeup and buying Doritos.
As the fourth season of the hit streaming sci-fi-horror drama, approaches, Netflix is rolling out a series of brand collaborations to draw the public's attention. But it's not just putting the Stranger Things name on products. It's creating new ways to interact with the show, and its characters.
Let’s take a look at the recent drops:
(Image: Domino's)
Domino’s and Netflix went into the lab to create a new app.
The new Mind Ordering app is designed to place subjects inside Hawkins National Lab, the secretive government lab from the show. In this immersive environment, they can explore the lab and discover the Noid or Demogorgon along the way.
But users can really turn it up to Eleven by ordering pizza without even pressing a button. Thanks to facial recognition and eye-tracking technology, users can make gestures and expressions to place a Domino’s order. Taking things one step further into the show, a pizza ordered with the app is delivered in a retro Domino’s box.
Domino’s and Netflix also rolled out a landing page for the app, complete with a backstory video featuring Dustin and Lucas.
(Photo: M·A·C Cosmetics)
Stranger Things now has its own makeup collection thanks to a collab with the beauty brand M·A·C Cosmetics.
Though all roads lead to ‘80s looks for this collab, it has a choose-your-own-adventure feel. Users can pick between the human world and the upside down world, or choose between the Hawkins Class of 1986 palette and the Void Eye Palette. It also has shades specific to the show. M·A·C’s famous Lipglass has Eerie El, while powder blush offers a shade called Friends Don’t Lie.
“Coming of age in a small town in the 80s, I completely relate to the vibe and characters of Stranger Things,” Fatima Thomas, M·A·C senior artist, said in a news release. “This collaboration perfectly captures the essence of the era: spirited, adventurous and fun.”
The limited edition collection is available at Ulta Beauty, Ulta’s website, and M·A·C’s website.
(Photo: Doritos)
You’ve got the makeup and ordered a pizza. Now you’re ready to take in a virtual concert.
This tie-in with Doritos features activations on multiple levels. There’s limited edition packaging of Doritos and Doritos 3D Crunch that’s particular to Stranger Things. There’s also a limited edition flavor for the occasion. Dubbed Doritos 3D Crunch Three Cheese, it mixes cheddar, Monterey Jack and parmesan cheese.
But these bags are not merely a vessel for chips. They are also a portal through which fans can reserve a ticket for "Live From The Upside Down,” a virtual concert that is set to be held on June 23. It features 80s stars The GoGo’s, Soft Cell and Corey Heart performing their classic material from the era. Plus, one of the bands will perform with current pop icon Charlie XCX.
As with the Domino’s collab, this also has a backstory. Per Domino’s press release:
The story goes that back in 1986, a tour bus crashed near Hawkins, Ind., headed to Doritos Music Fest '86 – the greatest concert that never happened. The musicians disappeared into another dimension and the show was canceled… until now.
(Photo: Skinny Butcher)
The plant-based trend in food can't be overlooked, even when it comes to streaming TV activations. Skinny Butcher rolled out a line of Stranger Things-themed plant-based nuggets ahead of the new season, making the vegan eats available at Walmart stores nationwide. It's a chance for the brand to tout its Crazy Crispy Chick'n Nuggets, which replace chicken with pea protein and a progressive vegetable fiber strain. It gives Stranger Things a place in the freezer section, and appeals to those who are opting for a meat alternative.
It's also a chance to bring noteriety to the brand itself, which is the result of a collaboration between former Garden Fresh Gourmet Vice Chairman Dave Zilko and the Los Angeles-based Golden West Food Group.
"No secret experiments were conducted here – just some ingenuity from the team at Golden West Food Group!" Zilko quipped in the announcement.
For one, Netflix is putting lots of marketing resources behind Stranger Things’ latest season. For another, its team is getting creative, and the teams at some big brands are right there with them, ready to do something new.
Going a level deeper, these collaborations show how marketing doesn't have to limit brands to a single category. A promotion for a streaming TV show is crossing into food and beauty. It’s bringing in tech, music and retail. Each individual partnership in turn offers a way for Stranger Things to reach a unique audience. After all, the Venn diagram overlap between the Doritos crowd and the Skinny Butcher crowd probably isn't too big. With each collaboration, Netflix in turn creates additional mediums where Stranger Things is represented, making it seem ubiquitous.
These collaborations also show brand strength for Stranger Things itself. To have the leeway to create these new experiences, a brand must already be recognizable enough to build around.
Stranger Things’ brand has a pair of elements, which play off each other. For one, it has recognizable characters and vocabulary that brands can have fun with. Zilko's quote was just one of many examples of cheeky comments in press releases for these collaborations.
The show is also highly associated with 80s nostalgia. This is present throughout these collaborations, with the vintage pizza box, mall-era makeup shades and, of course, the 80s bands playing at the virtual concert.
It’s this blend of the recognizable and the new that has driven success for Stranger Things to date.
Stranger Things’ marketing has gotten attention in its own right before with an interactive billboard, an off-menu Demogorgon Frappuccino at Starbucks and an unexpected boost for Eggo waffles. With collaborations that bring together other brands and interactive media, it continues to break new ground.Adobe Analytics looked at how ecommerce shopping habits shifted in 2022.
Ecommerce is showing staying power with consumers following the pandemic, leaving room for the growth of more product categories and digitally-enabled ways to shop.
That’s the takeaway from new data released by Adobe Analytics this week that offers the latest evidence to help understand shifts in digital shopping behavior that accompanied the lifting of pandemic restrictions in 2022.
While there is evidence that more people returned to stores in 2022, Adobe found continued growth in several areas of ecommerce that spiked during the pandemic, including grocery and Buy Now Pay Later. At the same time, a slowdown in curbside pickup and uptick in mobile shopping offer a reminder that behavior will continue to evolve.
Here's a look at the data:
There are signs that consumers are turning online to buy more types of products. Categories like home furnishings and grocery previously struggled to take off in ecommerce, but both saw notable growth in 2022.
Home furnishings grew 10.2% year-over-year, reaching $126 billion in spend. This continued in February 2023, with 12.9% sales growth to $9.4 billion.
Grocery, which saw a surge during the pandemic, saw continued growth of 10.8% in 2022, reaching $86.8 billion. In February 2023, there was even more pronounced growth of 26.7% YoY, driving $8.4 billion in spending.
Not every category saw such a dramatic uptick. Electronics, which consistently has the largest share of ecommerce spend, grew 4% year-over-year in 2022. Meanwhile, apparel fell 3.8% year-over-year.
“Ecommerce demand has remained resilient in an uncertain economic environment, driven in part by lasting pandemic habits where consumers had no choice but to leverage online food and home furnishing shopping services,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, in a statement. “Now consumers have embraced the rich ecommerce experiences that made them feel comfortable getting these necessities delivered to their doorsteps, making these categories new growth drivers in the digital economy.”
The pandemic ecommerce boom also led consumers to embrace new types of digital shopping experiences, from how they paid to how they received items.
In this area, there are also signs of continued expansion. Buy Now Pay Later, which allows shoppers to pay in installments, had a fast rise in 2020 and 2021 amid the ecommerce boom. Expansion continued as a higher cost of living due to inflation left consumers seeking to spread out payments. In 2022, the share of online purchases made with BNPL continued to grow at a rate of 14% year-over-year, while revenue grew 27%.
Adding to evidence of staying power, BNPL is proving to be popular in the categories showing the most growth. In the first two months of 2023, groceries’ share of BNPL grew 40%, while home furnishings grew by 38%.
“The rise of Buy Now Pay Later usage for groceries tells us that consumers are likely making bigger purchases online to take advantage of special promotions and stock up on staples, thus managing living expenses in more flexible ways,” Pandya said. “The strong online growth of home furnishing purchasing is expected to bolster Buy Now Pay Later adoption, given the higher ticket prices in this category.”
Price is also playing a role. According to Adobe’s Digital Price Index data from January 2019 through February 2023, share increased in the cheapest pricing tier for categories such as groceries (35.6%) and electronics (57.1%).
The pandemic also introduced more shoppers to fulfillment methods that blended ecommerce and stores. One of these was curbside pickup, which was a must-have option for retailers amid the health emergency that required distancing. But this practice has seen a slowdown. In 2021, 23% of online orders from retailers who offered curbside pickup used this option. In 2022, it fell to 19%, followed by a further fall to 17% in the first two months of 2023. However, there are still more signs of interest in grocery, which was a prime use of curbside pickup. That category grew 8% year-over-year in early 2023. By contrast, electronics grew only 2%.
Many retailers now have curbside pickup, and that's unlikely to go away. Rather, it is now best considered one of a number of options that retailers are offering consumers who want to have choices, alongside in-store pickup and local delivery.
The return to stores didn't replace ecommerce. Rather, the two channels are now blended more than ever before. As shoppers move across physical and digital retail, they are embracing mobile devices that help to connect the two. Adobe noted that the 2022 holiday season marked a “turning point” for mobile shopping, as a majority (51%) of Cyber Week sales were made using smartphones for the first time. This trend is expected to continue. By December 2023, Adobe expects smartphones to drive the majority of sales every month.
Yet there’s a gap between the largest retailers and smaller retailers in growth. Retailers with over $1 billion in annual sales are driving 38% more visits that result in purchases than retailers making $10-50 million in annual sales. For smaller retailers, share of revenue is also 8.6% lower.
It underscores how there are still plenty of opportunities to expand and improve digital commerce. The pandemic proved to be a great leap forward for retailers introducing ecommerce capabilities, but it is not the end of the expansion.