The end of 2025 brings some of the biggest releases for my favorite pieces of entertainment. These releases are, of course, Taylor Swift’s 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl (TLOASG), and Season 5 of Stranger Things. With such wildly different marketing processes and levels of success, I couldn’t help but compare the two and analyze where either went right or wrong this time.
Wrapping up nearly 10 years of production, Stranger Things has been ramping up its marketing this past month, relying heavily on nostalgia. With many sayings such as “the end of an era” and “one last adventure” on Instagram, it seems like the directors, the Duffer Brothers, are really drumming up anticipation as Netflix’s “best TV show” comes to an end.
Heading back to the beginning, the social media marketing for Stranger Things Season 5 has been relatively quiet for the past year. The teaser trailer dropped, and after that, the show went radio silent. This strategy helps build suspense without overwhelming viewers.
One of the main complaints in movie and TV culture now is that fans feel like everything about the plot is revealed ahead of time, a common complaint in other franchises like Marvel, and one that the Duffer Brothers are heavily avoiding. Little to nothing is known about the plot of Season 5, with an ominous synopsis posted online and filming kept mainly under wraps.
However, come the first week of October, the show did one of the smartest marketing strategies I think I’ve ever seen a show do: they sat their cast down and had them react to their favorite memories from the show, with each season given a week to shine.
Since character development is one of the show’s main strengths, and at its core, Stranger Things is about friendship, having the cast dynamics shown in such a wholesome way before the season’s release really helps build audience excitement. It shows that some fan-favorite duos like Steve and Dustin will be returning and helps bring back the love for the show some fans might’ve forgotten they had.
This also helps hype the final season by giving fans plenty to dissect without revealing any plot details. Some examples of these hidden clues include characters placed under the first letter of their love interest’s first name. For example, Jonathan Byers is sitting under an N for Nancy, and Mike Wheeler is sitting under both a W and an E, referencing his love triangle between Eleven and Will.
Another detail fans noticed is that the lights behind Eleven are turned off… perhaps hinting at a plot point in Season 5? These marketing campaigns and clues can give fans more things to talk about online, making Stranger Things more prevalent in online spaces like YouTube and Instagram. With new clips posted daily of cast members diving into their favorite scenes, it seems fans are being well fed without revealing much new Season 5 content.
With all this excitement building up for Stranger Things, I couldn’t help but compare it to Taylor Swift’s recent album release. With an album drop so significant that many artists moved their release dates to avoid coinciding with Swift, I saw little to no marketing to build excitement for this apparently incredible album.
I felt like fans were doing most of the heavy lifting in promoting the new album, which is definitely not as fun as Swift could have done with her marketing, nor as effective.
Since Swift is the queen of Easter eggs, I expected to find more promotional hints and excitement for something as significant as a new album. In the past, Swift has used some of the most impressive marketing techniques to get fans excited about her album releases. For example, instead of just posting the track list for her tenth album, Midnights, Swift hosted “Midnights Mayhem with Me.” This TikTok series had Swift roll a lottery ball machine filled with numbers 1-13 and name the track lists one night at a time based on the number she rolled.
For 1989 (Taylor’s Version), Swift had fans decode puzzles on Google to reveal the names of her vault tracks. When a certain number of puzzles had been solved across the globe, the track names were posted on Swift’s Instagram.
Activities like this drum up excitement and help get fans involved. It also allows fans to feel like they’re contributing to something greater and personally helping with the album rollout, while increasing goodwill for the artist. In the TLOASG era, most of the marketing has been done… after the album release? Swift has appeared on multiple talk shows, including The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, to promote her music, but what about before?
Why are there no fun Easter eggs to send fans hunting for clues or to play into nostalgia for past eras? This is where I think Swift went wrong. She also falsely marketed TLOASG as the album that raises the curtain on her world-renowned Eras Tour, but it’s more of an “I love Travis Kelce” album — basically a Lover 2.0. I feel like Swift completely missed the creative mark on this project and could learn from other marketing tactics that are being wildly successful right now.
Swift herself could’ve given a brief recap of her different eras leading up to the release of TLOASG, which would serve as a reminder of why she’s a showgirl. Showgirls have eras and live their lives on stage. If Swift had taken a week of reflection for each era with Easter eggs for the upcoming album, fans would’ve been much better prepared to receive the album and understand the concept, while also feeling connected and involved in the whole process.
For her thirteenth album, I hope Swift will come up with a much better marketing tactic, especially since 13 is, after all, her lucky number. There are high stakes for you, Swift. Don’t let us down again.
“Stranger Things Season 5: Volume 1” will premiere on Netflix on Nov. 26. The full trailer is expected to drop at the beginning of November, following the close of the four-week revisit of the Stranger Things marketing campaign. To get involved in reliving the magic, Stranger Things is hosting Stranger Saturdays, where fans get together to rewatch episodes from that week’s season.
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