“Has it been this busy since it opened?”

“It wasn’t too bad on the first day, but since then it’s been crazy. We can’t even get a minute to breathe.” 

It was a hurried, yet still pleasant, exchange at the retail point-of-sale with two associates at Netflix House, the streaming juggernaut’s first retail concept to open at the King of Prussia Mall in Philadelphia. One of them was meticulously scanning and folding branded swag, and while the exasperated look on her face was clear, it still felt widely understated given the larger-than-life environment we were sharing at that particular moment in time.

The 100,000-square-foot experience just opened three days prior, and families were eagerly snapping photos and picking through merch displays like a flock of vultures. Small children crawled all over an oversized Thing from Wednesday, smiling with toothy grins at their parents as they commemorated the moment on their iPhones. The space, designed like a trippy funhouse, had bright colors, three-dimensional shapes, and characters popping out of the walls and even on the ceiling. And Instagrammable moments, including a Bridgerton-branded series sponsored by Mastercard, were aplenty.

The opening is undoubtedly a milestone moment for Netflix, which plans to open two additional Netflix House locations in Dallas next month and Las Vegas in 2027. But it’s also a critical moment for the broader entertainment and retail industries, which have long toiled with ideas like “retailtainment” and “experiential moments.” 

Much as Netflix completely changed the way we consume media, the company is doing the same for retail by encouraging us to rethink the role that beloved IP can play in experience design and retail merchandising. 

Fandom, Come to Life

Content has long been merged with consumerism. Disneyland or Universal Studios may come to mind as utopically marketed destinations that don’t shy away from excessive franchise integration. Rides and adjacent souvenir shops are themed with such precision that they leave you questioning the role of a minor character or plot point. Themed snacks and drinks go viral on TikTok not for their taste, but for their picture-perfect alignment with a fictional universe’s worldbuilding. Attractions themed around famous film franchises generate multi-hour queues, and visitors converse with the characters they recognize as they bop from place to place, typically filming their entire exchange. 

As the universes of these entertainment conglomerates grow, so too do their opportunities for experiential design and retailtainment. Netflix House specifically brings its “most popular shows and movies to life through first-of-their-kind, immersive, story-driven experiences…This is fandom coming to life, where you can actually step inside the worlds you’ve been watching and loving for years.” 

The initial press release promised a “first-of-its-kind” venue that regularly updates its entertainment, merch, and experience to feature different characters and shows. The retail-specific area of King of Prussia’s Netflix House touts collections for KPop Demon Hunters, One Piece, Squid Game, and Stranger Things, among others. Meanwhile, the branded Netflix Bites restaurant has menu items dedicated to twenty different shows. 

At the surface, this allows Netflix to tout the breadth and depth of its catalogue. But in reality, the most alluring motive for the business is to keep the space enticing enough to keep visitors coming back. 

The Philadelphia location features a few smaller-scale experiences, such as mini golf and laser tag. But the A-list stars of the event are two immersive, escape-room style adventures based on One Piece and Wednesday. These are ticketed events, which make it possible for folks to travel far distances with a clear intent and reward. However, the restaurant doesn’t offer reservations, leaving plenty of time for visitors to wander aimlessly through the space to discover, connect, and shop.

Turning Entertainment into Monetary Value 

The TV program you just binged may never break the fourth wall, but immersive experiences built by Disney, Universal, and now Netflix are programmed to reel you back in once a season or series ends. In a streaming-served era where overnight ratings are harder to predict and box-office sales continue to surge and fall, a growing number of entertainment production companies are finding new ways to harness the commercial viability of their international IP. They’re thinking beyond multi-territory spinoffs and one-time merchandise drops and instead are immersing audiences into the story. In cases like Netflix, they’re even making their fans part of the plot. 

With Walt Disney Parks generating over $30 billion annually, it's no surprise others want a piece of the action. The immersive entertainment market is projected to grow from $87.51 billion to a staggering $519.77 billion, and Mastercard’s Travel Industry Trends Report noted a 65% increase in experience-related spending among US consumers between 2019 and 2023. This is where consumers’ minds, hearts, and wallets are going. 

Neil Connolly, Creative Director of Immersive Everywhere, explained that it all comes down to emotional appeal:

"It makes people feel entirely alive…when you're in it, when you're doing it, when you're experiencing it, your heart is pounding in your chest.”

Any production company can now reap the rewards of the fast-growing “experiential” market. That is, if they’re truly willing to experiment with sensory engagement beyond a stage or screen. Although Netflix and Disney have built in-house offerings, Immersive Everywhere and HH Productions are increasing market headway as reputable licensees. Brian Hook is the Chief Creative Officer of HH Productions, and Executive Producer of ‘Peaky Blinders: The Rise,’ ‘Doctor Who: Time Fracture,’ and ‘The Great Gatsby Immersive Experience.' He noted that the key is to encourage production companies to reframe how audiences experience beloved stories and characters. 

“Could you put an audience in their own episode of Doctor Who? Could they be the hero? That was the challenge that I put to the BBC,” Hook said in an interview with Future Commerce. “That's the thing that watching Dr. Who can't give you. The original contract was supposed to give us four ‘Daleks’ (a fictional extraterrestrial race portrayed in the series). I think we ended up with 600 props from the show. And they went further. They gave me a character called Brian the Ood that started in the audiobook, moved through our live experience, and ended up in the TV series. So it ended up being a character that you'd met and had a drink with in the interval, [but] you then saw on-screen two years later. That was a really special gift to give to our audience members.”

All3Media International is one of the leading independent distributors of TV programming and formats in the UK and is also exploring the power of these branded IP moments. Housing approximately 35,000 hours of content, the company uses its rich licensing mix as the foundation to create intimate moments where brand loyalists and fans can engage closely with licensors. 

“It serves fans of our IP; thousands of people apply to be on our TV shows, and we can give them a similar experience,” said Nick Smith is the EVP of Formats and Licensing at All3Media International. And this IP is precious, which is why the company taps external experts to build these immersive experiences while overseeing every step of the development process. 

“We prefer to work with experts in their respective fields. Everyone at  All3Media Group is an expert at producing and licensing television shows, but our IP is too valuable to us to be learning on the job outside our core skills,” Smith said. “We really care about how our properties are presented, so we are always closely involved in the development with our partners; we don’t just sign contracts and give our licensees carte blanche.” 

Connolly, who works on the production side, echoes the importance of such a relationship because it ensures the final product is accurate and true to the source IP: “They understand how to make an incredible television show, and I know how to make incredible live experiences. The two are very different, but we go on that journey together and learn a lot of different things from each other about how the public reacts to watching a TV show versus actually playing the experience for themselves.”

Retail’s Bonfire Effect 

When households click into their streaming app of choice, they have access to days, even years, worth of content. But what a streaming app does not provide is access to our emotional need for community and offline connection.

Entertainment companies are “recognizing that the preciousness of human contact is actually very desirable, and so they're trying to figure out ways to bring people together,” said Kevin Kelley, Founder of multi-disciplinary strategy and design firm Shook Kelley and author of Irreplaceable. “One thing that [these companies are] so good at is ruthless efficiency, but we're realizing that some friction is good in life. Some inefficiencies are good. Friction is actually better than sitting in pajamas every night binge-watching, and the digital companies are realizing that. Tension has become a profit power. If you can own attention, like Netflix, it's all businesses based on how many hours they can keep you glued.”

French sociologist Émile Durkheim called it collective effervescence: the energy that emerges when strangers gather around shared symbols. Theme parks have always understood this, but streaming platforms are late converts to the church of physical space. After spending billions teaching us that convenience trumps community, Netflix is now betting that what we really crave is the opposite the beautiful inefficiency of being somewhere together.

This is in stark contrast to the theatrical experience that Netflix disrupted twenty years ago; rather than passively consuming media together, Netflix House invites us to immerse ourselves collectively, and to participate commercially. It’s consumption, to be sure, but of a different variety.

The art of these experiences lies in the human connection derived from sensory design, emotional contagion, and resonance with the IP. Connolly compares these immersive spaces to a traditional theatre production, noting that the community is the differentiating factor. While theatre may offer a similar story, there is no promise of human connection. As a result, people who actively opt in and pay to engage with an experience will garner a personal connection with the IP itself. 

“You go to the theatre, you watch the show,” Connolly said. “What happens as soon as the show finishes? You’re kicked out to the street. This whole kind of communal element that we've all been through watching a show is lost because you’re left to sit with it alone or talk to the person that you went with.”

Conversely, Connolly noted that in  immersive experiences, groups gather at bars, restaurants, and retail shops to decompress together after the show. “They run straight into a bar, and before they've done anything else, before they even go to the bathroom, they run to each other like, ‘I need to tell you what I was thinking at this exact moment in time.’ ‘What were you doing?’ ‘How were you feeling?’ And that's such a wonderful thing; you don't get that when you go to the theatre.” 

Kelley agrees, calling this moment of gathering “the bonfire effect.” 

“There's something really powerful when people gather,” he said. “They can be strangers, but when they're around that bonfire, they achieve that social bliss and participation mystique, and it's a quality we can't deny. Everybody's trying to figure out that physical experience, because it's more precious, it's more desired…If you can gather people around your brand and create your own bonfire moments that bring people together, you end up building loyalty. You give the customers something they can't get anywhere else. You build a community.”

How Safety Drives Immersion

Theme parks like Disneyland are so commercially viable because they provide escapism. When consumers walk through the main entry gates, they are fully immersed in a world of magic, where they can interact with the characters they love in the spaces they love and buy merch to commemorate these moments forever. This is pure, monetized worldbuilding and immersion. 

The challenge with doing this from scratch, however, is that it takes a lot of time to unpack the design and gamification nuances that are meant to activate consumers to truly let themselves go and experience a space. 

“People who are creating these experiences really have to have an understanding of the sociological, psychological, and anthropological dimensions of the place,” explained Kelley. Creating a sense of safety from the moment visitors set foot in an environment is a critical yet often overlooked part of the process. 

“We look at how people start before they come into the building, whether it's a parking lot or a walk up to a front door,” Kelley said. “We're trying to figure out what kind of energy they bring into the building. And then we follow them throughout their journey, looking at what they engage with and how long they dwell. As humans, we get a little nervous the farther we get into a building, away from the exits and windows. It’s hardwired in our body; we get a little more uncomfortable unless you do something to the back corner to make it more enticing, more comfortable, more perceptually safe, and more enticing. If we start to make that area feel better, we'll get you to shop more and stay there longer.” 

This feeling of safety can be cultivated through the senses. After all, it is these innate moments of sight, smell, and touch that guide our decision-making process, whether for a live show, an experiential entertainment moment, or a retail store. “When you go into an alleyway or even a grocery store, you don't control your eyes,” Kelley explained. “You don't tell your eyes what to look at or what to smell, at least not at first. All those decisions were made involuntarily. It swims us toward things that are good and avoids things that are bad.”

Connolly described how sensory design principles have informed a comprehensive onboarding experience that helps audience members reach that point of trust and safety. “I touch every single point of that consumer's journey,” he said. “It's not just what happens on the stage. The entire building effectively becomes the stage, so the creative touches every element of that journey to convey that message. That way, people who know the game or know the show can feel welcome and play. There's also a member of staff there telling you how to play the game, how to work your way into the show, and instructing you on which actions will and won’t do. Great care and attention to detail are given on both the operational and creative sides.”

Traditional retailers can and should implement a similar storytelling methodology within their environments, according to Kelley. Similar to Connolly’s onboarding process, Kelley’s creative approach hinges on observing consumer experiences and establishing a connection through story: “No matter what type of space we're designing, a retailer institution, a classroom, an office building, we divide the space into scenes,” Kelley explained. “Just like in a movie, we're trying to have the intro scene set the dynamic for the whole story…we're generally expecting the customer to walk in busy, tired, thinking about light bills and taxes and kids and everything else. In those first 30 seconds, we have to divide their attention. Within the first couple of minutes, you’ve got to grab people in and tell the story.” 

However, overdoing the “attention-grabber moment” can leave consumers overstimulated, ultimately causing them to physically, even emotionally, shut down. Maintaining a balance where consumers are engaged without feeling overwhelmed or burdened is key. “It's this really fine line,” Kelley said. “It’s similar to seeing a movie about a topic you don't relate to. You may not understand that culture, but if you can see yourself in that story, you can start to buy into it. But it is a subtle art.”

A Space for Active and Passive Fans

Watching 20 minutes of a series on a streaming app you already pay for doesn’t feel like a big monetary commitment. However, spending time and money to engage with an experience does. 

But, like the theatre, the barrier to entry means creatives not only face the challenge of integrating IP in a way that resonates with licensors, but must also engage both active and passive consumers who may have no prior knowledge of the IP. For example, Hook divides audiences into six distinct demographics to consider in the design, marketing, and onboarding processes. “They range from someone who doesn't know what they bought a ticket for and has come with their partner, to someone who has no interest in the IP, or they'd rather just have a drink, all the way through to expert immersive theatre-goers who are going to find every easter egg or every clue, who are going to come back ten times.” 

That, in the end, is the north star of all these experiences: to create environments exciting enough that get people coming back again and again. And Hook’s data shows that when spaces have rotating moments and IP themes, the proposition works. For the Gatsby experience, there are 49 different ways to see the show. For Doctor Who, there were about 150 ways for the audience to see and interact with it across seventeen rooms. When brands build a diverse, multifaceted experience early in the design process, the experience's lifecycle is lengthened. 

To identify the right IP to convert into an immersive experience, Connolly recommended that brands consider three factors: playability, interactivity, and overall visual aesthetics. Used in tandem, these are powerful forces that connect consumers to the entertainment brands, characters, and worlds they love in the physical realm.

“That ability to make it really interact with the brand and to make them feel alive and be a part of that world,” he said. “You've really got to immerse yourself in that world and think. ‘How can we do something that allows people to enter that world and engage with it in a meaningful way?’”