If you’ve watched Stranger Things, you probably noticed that Hawkins, Indiana, is hawking a lot of products these days.

Name a major brand, and it has probably appeared in the series: Eggo? Check. Nike? Check. Coca-Cola? Burger King? 7-Eleven? Adidas? Well…you get the point. So far, more than 140 brands and products have been spotted in the series’s fourth season by the Product Placement Blog, which tracks brand appearances in film and television.

Just can’t get enough: As Season Four, Volume Two premieres, brands are still looking for ways to worm their way into the series. But it’s harder than it might seem for a brand to lock down screen time in the Starcourt Mall or The Upside Down.

“Everything that happens on Stranger Things is led by creative,” said Erin Schmidt, chief of product placement at BEN, which has worked to place 22 brands—including KFC, Oreo, Gap, Dunkin’, U-Haul, Milk, Dr Pepper, and Hardee’s—into the series throughout the years. “It’s not dictated by brands. And it’s not dictated by Netflix.”

Production value

The potential for brand integrations with Stranger Things became evident after Season One, after Eggo was depicted as the snack of choice for Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, or when she crushed Coke cans with psychokinetic powers.

“After Season One, every phone call I got was, ‘I want to be in Stranger Things!’” Schmidt recalled.

Money changes everything: Product placements are left to the discretion of the Duffer brothers, the show’s creators, and there are no paid integrations, Netflix told Marketing Brew. To try to get onscreen, BEN works directly with the showrunners and prop masters to identify where there are opportunities for brand integrations, before determining what kinds of resources brands can provide to the set.

• Take Season Two’s KFC brand integration, for example, in which Steve Harrington, played by Joe Keery, awkwardly eats a meal of KFC chicken with Barb’s parents after her demise. Behind the scenes, BEN collected period-appropriate packaging assets from KFC and had the food containers created at a prop house.
• Season Three provided even more opportunities for brand integrations with the construction of the Starcourt Mall, which featured brick-and-mortar stores as well as plenty of opportunity for characters to sip New Coke.
• More than 100 brands appeared in the third season alone, with advertising value estimated to be more than $15 million, according to a report from the UK-based firm Concave Brand Tracking.

Helping the prop master is a win-win for brands, which have the opportunity to appear in episodes, and for showrunners, who are racing to source props—no easy task when working on a period-specific piece. Providing props to shows can lead to serendipitous moments.

“Even if it wasn’t a scripted scene—I even think there was a character just drinking Dr. Pepper on a park bench—that meant one less thing the prop master had to do to actually supply that product,” Schmidt said.

Keep reading here.—KS

Future Social is a weekly newsletter on social media, content, and creators from Jack Appleby, a Morning Brew creator who’s worked in social media for 10 years at companies like Beats by Dre, Microsoft, and Twitch. Check out an excerpt from one of his pieces below, and sign up for Future Social here.

All us social media managers spend our time guessing what the algorithms are hungry for. While the platforms never officially reveal their appetite, it’s pretty clear Instagram’s all about Reels and carousels. You should seriously consider exploring carousels more deeply for long-form storytelling, increased shareability, and additional, unobtrusive promos.

Mechanical reasons to carousel: This post format has a handful of advantages over the typical one image/video post.

• A carousel swipe counts as an “engagement,” and the more engagement a post gets, the more Instagram pushes it into feeds.
• Instagram gives carousels a second chance in the feed. If the first image isn’t engaged with, they’re often resurfaced leading with the second image.
• Statistically, carousels earn more comments, saves, and reach than individual photo or video posts.

Ways to go ’round and ’round: It’s worth playing around with the format’s flexibility to see how it’ll help your brand goals. A few formats worth trying out:

• Tell a story over 10 frames
• Write a list
• Use the second slide to promote your products

There’s a decent chance carousels may become your primary Instagram grid content format. My personal favorite way to use them: as comics of sorts, telling narratives that users can swipe through at their leisure.

Read a breakdown of how to tell full stories over Instagram carousels.—JA

It’s the start of a holiday weekend—and the beginning of Q3. If you’re reading this, we hope you’ve wrapped up work for the week and are simply killing time before it’s acceptable for your Slack green bubble to turn into an empty one.

If that’s the case, take some time to read some of most popular stories from Q2:

• Product placement is going to take over your favorite show
• Why Manscaped is leaning into ads on Tumblr
• The 80s are back—at least in ad design
• Clara wants to even the playing field between brands and creators
• Influencers want pay equity. But what about their kids?

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

ID: Twitter shared insights on how brands should engage on issues of identity.

Burnin’ up: Meta and Yale teamed up for a report about public perceptions on climate change. Here are the key takeaways.

Small but mighty: Tips for small businesses to maximize their marketing ROI.

Candid convos with industry icons: Hosted by Brew co-founder Alex Lieberman, the Imposters podcast delves deep into the personal and mental challenges some of the biggest names in biz have faced while reaching their most resounding achievements. Listen here.

Happy Friday! Don’t let the weekend pass without checking out the new job listings on the Marketing Brew Job Board!

Today’s featured openings:

• Growth Marketer at Harmony Venture Labs
• Account Supervisor at Dixon Schwabl + Company
• Amazon Advertising Strategist at Forum Brands

See more jobs or post your job opportunities here.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Exclusive: Hashtag Pay Me, a calculator that helps influencers determine rates, rolls out
• Staffing companies expect recession to boost shift to freelance and temporary work
• Ever wonder what upfront negotiations are like?

Which headlines are real marketing news, and which one is fake?

1. Coke teams up with Marshmello for limited-edition flavor
2. RadioShack, now a crypto swap, trends over profane tweets
3. See Arby’s and Old Spice plugging ‘meat sweat defense’ in collaborative ad
4. Budweiser issues apology after selling American flag cans with only 48 stars

Keep scrolling for the answer.

::drumroll:: Introducing The Brief: A Summit Presented by Marketing Brew

Marketing Brew has partnered with some of the world’s most recognized brands and influential marketers to bring you a premiere one-day marketing event in the heart of New York City.

You’ll hear from a powerhouse panel of speakers that will spotlight innovations, highlight strategies, and provide solutions to the modern marketer’s biggest challenges. Sounds good, right? Dust off your work pants and join us.

Early-bird pricing ends soon, so don’t wait. Save yourself a seat (and some green) now!