In the past week, a series of new campaigns have made one thing clear: the line between advertising and entertainment no longer exists. From Jeff Goldblum to Macaulay Culkin to Myles Garrett, brands are no longer merely borrowing celebrity faces—they’re borrowing the very worlds those celebrities inhabit.
Jeff Goldblum’s collaboration with Xfinity for Wicked: For Good was the most literal example — a campaign that blurred the line between movie promotion and brand marketing. In the short film, Goldblum reprises his role as The Wizard, leaving the Wicked premiere and stepping into an Xfinity-branded world of cinematic fantasy. It’s a broadband commercial disguised as a sequel scene, merging Comcast’s streaming business with Universal Pictures’ film universe. The spot racked up 3.2 million views on Instagram within two days — a testament to the magnetic power of IP-led marketing when audiences already have emotional investment in the characters.
Macaulay Culkin’s “Home But Not Alone” campaign for Home Instead extended that approach — this time using one of pop culture’s most iconic characters to deliver a human message. As Kevin McCallister, Culkin trades slapstick for sentimentality, learning that even the most independent kids eventually need help caring for their parents. It’s an ad about elder care that feels like a movie epilogue, and it worked: over 500,000 YouTube views and 61,000 Instagram views within five days, without Culkin ever promoting it on his personal account. Home Instead didn’t just borrow the Home Alone nostalgia; it turned the franchise’s emotional DNA into its own story about family connection.
Then there’s Jason Biggs for Kraft Mac & Cheese, which pushed the model further — using unlicensed nostalgia to get the same effect. Without ever naming American Pie, Kraft cast Biggs as “the ultimate pie guy” to launch its new Apple Pie flavor. The campaign drew 33,000 Instagram views on Biggs’ account in three days, using humor and familiarity to ignite conversation without the cost or legal complexity of licensing official film IP. This kind of soft allusion — familiar enough to trigger recognition, distant enough to avoid copyright — is quickly becoming one of the most efficient creative tools in modern advertising.
Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett pushed the crossover even further with Gatorade’s “No Ordinary Athlete” campaign, created in partnership with Netflix’s Stranger Things ahead of the show’s fifth and final season. Garrett narrates a 30-second spot that re-imagines Gatorade’s 1987 “No Ordinary Thirst Quencher” ad inside the Stranger Things universe—complete with Hawkins-era visuals, vintage logos, and a synth-heavy soundtrack.
The campaign expands beyond digital with live activations at Cleveland Browns tailgates, Times Square, and Sunset Boulevard, alongside two limited-edition merchandise drops: the 1987 Hawkins Capsule and Upside Down Capsule. Across posts from Garrett (1.1 M followers), Netflix, and Gatorade, the campaign amassed nearly 13 million views in its first 48 hours.
It’s a major instance of a sports figure anchoring a Hollywood-IP campaign—an athlete narrating, promoting, and embodying a fictional world while reinforcing a real-world product. For Gatorade, it connects athletic performance with the emotional gravity of Stranger Things; for Netflix, it keeps its brand alive in off-platform marketing spaces during the show’s final rollout.
Together, these campaigns mark a shift in how brands approach entertainment IP: not as a one-off tie-in, but as a storytelling framework. It’s no longer about celebrity endorsements or product placement — it’s about borrowing narrative universes that audiences already emotionally recognize. Some brands, like Xfinity, can do this directly through corporate synergy (Comcast owns Universal). Others, like Home Instead and Kraft, rely on creative reinterpretation or personality-driven echoes of pop culture moments.
Kantar research shows that IP-linked campaigns deliver 25–35 percent higher emotional resonance and twice the viewer retention of traditional spots. But what’s new is the expansion of that model beyond the entertainment industry itself. Sports stars, heritage brands, and digital-first creators are now all part of the same storytelling supply chain—each with pre-built distribution networks and built-in audiences.
In effect, Hollywood IP has become a shared marketing currency—a set of familiar emotional assets that brands can lease, reinterpret, or allude to. And as Stranger Things, Wicked, and Home Alone prove, the emotional universes that once sold movie tickets are now selling broadband, elder care, and even powdered cheese.
