MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR x Stranger Things HAWKINS HELI-TOURS
How do we make a Stranger Things crossover land in a game built for aviation obsessives, not TV fandom?
To fans who’ve grown up with the show, Hawkins isn’t just a backdrop. It’s home. Now for the first time ever, Hawkins has a digital twin fans can visit. So we didn’t promote a game tie-in. We opened a travel agency.
From Hawkins Lab to blight-ridden pumpkin farms to Starcourt Mall, Stranger Things is a show where nothing is as it seems. Our travel agency was no exception, serving as an elaborate front for a smuggling operation masterminded by fan favourite Murray Bauman.
In collaboration with the Duffer brothers, we turned every campaign touchpoint into a secret coded message from Murray. Covertly designed to recruit gamers worldwide into flying risky missions to save Hawkins from being turned upside down for good…
HERO FILM
Shot by The Lynch Brothers and set to a chirpy jingle (which I sold into the client via an acapella rendition), the ad featured a set of secret mayday-style supers directing fans worldwide to call a local Indiana number...
cALL LINE → MICROSITE
Callers were then greeted by Murray who recruited them into his covert smuggling op, directing them to an authentic 1980’s compuserve-style microsite, and arming them with the codeword: SKY ARROW
The site hosted secret mission briefings, free game passes and sweepstakes for some Heli-merch.
PRESS
AD PRESS
EXPERIENTIAL
Back on the ground, we turned the Microsoft Experience Center in New York into a living, breathing Hawkins Heli-Tours travel agency. From hidden, coded Easter eggs to a fully immersive 4D UH-1 flight simulator that visitors could climb into and play, fans were dropped straight into the world of the game.
ACTIVATION
Meanwhile a few blocks away, we hijacked the Microsoft Cube in Times Square for a week. Transforming three DOOH screens into a 3D activation that felt airlifted straight out of Hawkins.
