After five seasons, You fans will finally see the fate of Penn Badgley’s murderous antagonist Joe Goldberg—and Netflix planned a killer marketing stunt to set up the final series run.
The streamer isn’t a stranger to hosting innovative campaigns to get fans excited: For the fourth season, Netflix brought a bloody tea cup ride to central London, while the second season’s shift to Los Angeles saw a city-wide scavenger hunt in partnership with Overheard LA. After the first season’s debut on Netflix, Badgley and co-star Shay Mitchell greeted fans in the Philippines inside the glass cage where Joe keeps his victims.
This time around, as part of its promotion for the fifth and final season, Netflix launched an activation in SoHo on April 22 and April 23. The two-day pop-up featured a replica of Mooney’s Bookstore, the shop that Joe works at in the first season, complete with shelves lined with real books and Easter eggs from previous seasons.
There was also a scavenger hunt portion with clues that led to a separate basement with a recreation of the infamous cage, which also doubled as a photo op. For the hunt, fans were encouraged to find highlighted words and a handwritten note in the books, which also included hints to the end of the series.
On the first day of the activation, the cast of the show, including Penn Badgley, Madeline Brewer, Charlotte Ritchie, Anna Camp, Griffin Matthews, and Frankie DeMaio, showed up to surprise fans.
Shelly Gillyard, vp of marketing for Netflix in the United States and Canada, said the marketing team dug in and thought about how to tie everything together and bring it back to where it all began.
“The bookstore was that place,” Gillyard told ADWEEK. “We thought about how to live the experience of being through the bookstore, having a surprise and an opportunity to find clues through the books, and highlight all seasons—not just Season 5—but all four seasons previously, and ultimately ending up in the cage as the big payoff.”
