ABOUT

Background
For nearly a decade, Stranger Things fans have been piecing together Hawkins, trying to get closer to a world they’ve only ever seen on their screens. The Microsoft Flight Simulator x Stranger Things DLC promised a world first: a 1:1 digital recreation of Hawkins. But with a fiercely protective fan base, every part of the campaign had to feel like it truly belonged in Hawkins, circa 1986.

Idea
Known for government cover-ups, missing persons and inter dimensional horror, Hawkins is the last place you’d book a sightseeing tour. So, with the help of the Duffer Brothers, we launched one: Hawkins Heli-Tours. Beneath the tourism campaign sat a covert pilot recruitment operation masterminded by Murray Bauman. The entire campaign followed one core principle: “Marketing like it’s 1986.” Because Stranger Things doesn’t feel nostalgic. It feels lived in. So every touchpoint intentionally downgraded modern digital experiences into analogue ones.
At the centre of the campaign sat the Microsoft Cube in Times Square: three pristine digital screens in the middle of Manhattan.

Rather than simply running retro creative across digital screens, we re-engineered the Cube into “the world’s largest CRT monitor.” Three pristine ultra-HD displays became a single giant 3D analogue artefact from the 1980s. Sacrificing two media surfaces entirely to create the sides of the monitor itself, while the central screen remained fixed. Broadcasting cutdowns of our hero film and using aviation signalling to direct passersby to our experiential installation at the Microsoft Experience Centre a few blocks away. 

Recreating CRT curvature, scanlines, signal flicker, screen glare, VHS tape loading, degraded textures, phosphor dots. Even the nicotine-yellowed ageing synonymous with 1980s office hardware. Downgrading the digital into something airlifted right out of Hawkins.