Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 15.10.2026 
By Ruby Lekhi, Midweight Creative, Uncovered
What’s stranger than Stranger Things? Stranger Things fried chicken. As a mega fan of the show and a creative who’d spent two years on the KFC UK&I account, this was the project I never knew I needed.
Part of KFC’s appeal is its familiarity to customers, which made it an interesting place to introduce a little uncertainty. Nobody can predict that collecting their wings will send the restaurant into another dimension, giving us a rich territory: subversion of expectation.
At Uncovered, we’re an ideas-first social agency working with brands including KFC and Tesco. World-building is a big part of our approach to KFC’s limited-time menus, and Hawkins Fried Chicken (HFC) gave us plenty to work with; reimagining KFC as an 80s chicken shop operating against the threat of the Upside Down, ahead of the release of the show’s final season. Gen Z and millennial fans were already looking for clues, and ATL agency Mother’s TV ad leant into cryptic fandom – planting codes and clues for Stranger Things x KFC fans to discover.
Our job was to translate the strangeness from the ATL and the limited time offer onto people’s feeds, giving fans a reason to get involved rather than just another partnership to scroll past. That work is now shortlisted for Best Use of Social Media for Entertainment at the UK Social Media Awards.
Finding the strange in the familiar
Working within Netflix’s IP guidelines meant being intentional about how to bring the world to life. Our strategy focused on the 80s aesthetic and giving people something unexpected to discover, with the food always at the centre. Our job was to make it strange, but drive buzz and appeal for the new menu.
I found myself going back to the film courses I’d taken at university, thinking about colour theory and how everyday objects can help tell a story. An old till could place us in the 80s without an explanation, while a shift into red lighting could make an ordinary restaurant unsettling. These were details we could use to bring Hawkins into a KFC, rather than simply decorate one with brand-heavy references.
The Stranger Things Burger was the hero of our food creative. A bright red burger bun isn’t exactly business as usual, so our burger build could lean into that unexpectedness while showing off the taste-driving fundamentals of food content, such as sauce dripping over crispy chicken. The ‘HFC’ uniform from the TVC and the addition of VHS glitches embedded the Stranger Things story through the film in a platform-native way, rather than slapping on a logo or end card.
Our art direction had to work in a feed, where customers will scroll straight past anything that looks and feels like an ad. We began with low-fi scenes that could have come from a customer’s phone, like opening a burger clamshell or collecting Stranger Wings at the counter, before subverting expectation; the restaurant glitching into an eery Hawkins Fried Chicken. The food triggered the transformation, making it part of the entertainment instead of an add on.
The same thinking shaped our social coverage of PR agency Freuds’ Hawkins Hotline activation. A phonebook offered a clue to its location, while a phone box interaction ended with an HFC worker appearing on a retro bike (if you know, you know), burger in hand. The bike brought another bit of that Stranger Things-coded character into the scene, but filming from the viewer’s perspective made the discovery something people could experience without being there.
Giving the fans something to work out
Looking like Hawkins was only part of the job. We also needed to understand how fans enjoyed interacting with Stranger Things, which was where the research into fan forums became useful. We discovered that theorising around the show mattered as much as watching, so we gave people a mystery they could help solve.
Real people drive engagement on social, so we worked with a well-established TV and film creator already making Stranger Things theory content, asking them to decode clues in Mother’s TVC, and inviting their audience to help. The appeal was the suspense of watching someone decode clues in real time, with room for viewers to engage and add what they’d noticed.
The clues could lead to the HFC website or a working phone line, with chicken cheques offering a real meal as the reward. KFC’s community management joined the comments with hints, giving people somewhere to take their theories and a reason to rewatch the TV ad.
We committed to the mystery on KFC’s own channels too, turning TikTok and Instagram into Hawkins Fried Chicken accounts with new names and logos. For a week during the tease, our community management peppered Stranger Things language into comments without explanation, while a dusty VHS tape interrupted an old KFC advert with a glimpse of HFC. We wanted fans to get the satisfaction of spotting what had changed, rather than explaining every reference.
This worked because we were in the conversation from the very beginning, working closely with KFC and Netflix as well as Mother, Freuds and media agency Mindshare. Agreeing the creative and release dates together meant that a clue on television could become a conversation in the comments on social, linking up channels for a through-the-line KFC x Stranger Things experience.
Knowing when not to be strange
There was also a moment when the most useful thing KFC could do was be reassuringly familiar again. With the finale arriving over New Year, we held a reactive slot for New Year’s Day, when watching Stranger Things on the sofa after a big night out made ordering a meal an obvious fit.
The idea was to respond to the conversation around the show while acknowledging the audience behaviour – hungover takeaways in front of the TV. So a last-chance reminder to try the menu made the most sense, giving people a reason not to leave the sofa.
Across the ten-week campaign, 201 million impressions were delivered. All three organic Instagram hero assets exceeded a 6% engagement rate, while half of the TikTok assets exceeded 11.9%, more than double the platform average. Those numbers matter, but the creative ambition was to give that attention somewhere to go, from investigating a clue to discovering a meal. As KFC’s Phoebe Syms put it: “We handed the keys to the fandom and let social do what it does best.”
Being shortlisted in an entertainment category means a lot to the team, because the whole point was making something fans could enjoy. For Uncovered, it also gives us a chance to show clients how social can expand a campaign world and shape a partnership by being in early conversations, rather than simply promoting it afterwards.
For me, the reminder was that the best creative is rooted in real, customer-driven insight: understanding what fans loved about both the show and KFC’s content led to work that genuinely cut through and captured attention at scale for an extra strange partnership.
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Author: Ruby Lekhi
