A Surprise Collaboration
My Mac had just booted up, I had finished my morning coffee, and I was settling into the rhythm of the day when our Marketing Manager came rushing over.
“Drop everything,” he said. “We need a concept for a new collaboration.”
I have worked on a number of collaborations before, and at their best they are creatively energising. At their most challenging they demand a careful balancing act, aligning two brands, two worlds and two sets of expectations. Either way, they always come with a sense of occasion.
“Who with?” I asked.
A slow smile spread across his face, the kind that signals news worth savouring. In that moment, I knew it could only go one of two ways. It was either going to be something wildly unexpected or something genuinely special.
It turned out to be both.
Tapping into Nostalgia
Stranger Things, famously drenched in nostalgia, goes beyond its paranormal plot lines and cinematic brilliance. From its styling to its subtle nods to the pop culture of the era, every frame resonates with the world I knew as a child.
I instantly recognised this as an unmissable opportunity to bring Clarks back to the brand I remembered, to the designs and colours that shaped a generation, and to weave that nostalgia into something magical.
Authenticity is something you simply cannot fake. Working with a brand with such rich history gave me the perfect opportunity to dig into the archives and recreate a pivotal era in Clarks’ story, bringing it vividly back to life. I wanted to create something that spoke both to younger audiences and to those of my vintage who still remember the bright green shop fronts that were unmistakably Clarks in the 1980s, the generation of us who were dragged into the store to have our feet measured on one of those, frankly, terrifying machines. This was more than a collaboration. It was a chance to honour a legacy while inviting a new generation to experience it for themselves.
Bringing Stranger Things to the UK
I imagined a story centred around a kid with powers at the heart of the narrative. Clarks adverts of the 1980s often featured kids with powers, from Hardware to the iconic Magic Steps, so why not create our own take on Eleven?
I wrote a script and shared it with our partners at Netflix. In the back of my mind, I knew there was little chance they would agree to me playing so freely with their IP. But after a couple of minor tweaks, we were given the go-ahead, and that is when production of the hero film really came to life.
Recreating the 1980s
The Clarks store of the 1980s is something we all remember, iconic in its design and a place where so many of us still hold vivid childhood memories. It made perfect sense, then, that we would set our film in one of those stores. But to make that vision a reality, we would need to build it ourselves.
One of the most thrilling parts of production was deciding to recreate a full 1980s Clarks store at Clarks HQ, complete with the bright green façade, geometric furnishings, and authentic vintage point-of-sale displays and posters, right where the brand has been based since it was founded 200 years ago. The attention to detail allowed us to step straight into the past and use it as the perfect launchpad for the collaboration.
With the set in place and the story fully realised, we were ready to shoot and share it with the world. The response was extraordinary.
A Record-Breaking Launch
The film went on to become the brand’s most viewed content of all time, amassing a staggering 22 million views within 24 hours of launch.
What made the collaboration feel truly authentic was the care we put into every detail, from the story centred on a kid with powers to the meticulously recreated 1980s store at Clarks HQ. Every choice, the shoes, the set, the characters, and the plethora of vintage Clarks Easter eggs seamlessly integrated for the Clarks aficionado was rooted in the worlds of both brands, allowing the paranormal and the real to coexist effortlessly. It did not feel forced or like a marketing gimmick, it felt like a story that could genuinely exist in both universes.
For me, it was hard to beat exploring the Upside Down while taking a good old trip down memory lane.