Mind Player
- Brand
- Seara
- Year
- 2025
- Objective
- Product Launch
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Other
- Platform
- Installation
- Agency
- DRUID Creative
Objective
Seara needed to launch a new snack line tied to its Netflix licensing deal — Chicken Fire Club and the Stranger Pizza range — and get it in front of a gaming audience. The brand's insight was that gamers don't snack mid-session because it means taking hands off the controls and losing the game. Rather than build a more convenient snack, Seara set out to remove the need for hands altogether, giving it a way to stand out among 130+ brands at CCXP25 and claim a real, non-sponsor place in gaming culture.
Solution
At a booth built to look like Hawkins National Laboratory, players strap on an EEG headset instead of picking up a controller. The game reads their concentration in real time and turns it directly into on-screen movement and decisions, framed as Eleven's telekinesis from Stranger Things — no joystick, keyboard, or mouse. Two players take on the lab side by side in the same session, steering their characters by focus alone. Because the game runs on concentration rather than input, both players' hands stay free for the whole round — free enough to eat Seara's Stranger Things snacks while they play.
Results
More than 1,500 people played Mind Player during the event, and the activation made Seara the most-talked-about brand at CCXP25 among more than 130 participating brands, including some of the world's biggest studios.
- 1
Players arrive at Seara's 180-square-meter CCXP25 booth and enter a dedicated room styled as a secret research lab evoking Stranger Things' Hawkins National Laboratory; sessions run two players at a time while the rest of the line queues and watches the shared screen.
- 2
An operator fits each player with an EEG headset carrying sensors on the scalp, which stands in for any joystick, keyboard, or mouse as the sole means of control.
- 3
Both of the player's hands are filled with Seara Stranger Things-branded snacks (nuggets and pizza bites) fresh from the air fryer, occupying the hands and ruling out any manual input.
- 4
A custom game built by DRUID Creative Gaming runs on screen: the system reads the player's concentration level from the head sensors in real time, converts it into in-game commands, and moves and animates the character only while focus holds, stalling when it lapses.
- 5
Some players report the same setup also steering the character by head movement or gaze direction, though Seara's official materials attribute control to concentration alone.
- 6
The player eats the snacks throughout the round, following the brand's premise that eating boosts brain activity and sharpens control — a marketing claim, not an independently verified one.
- 7
The round ends with the headset removed; unlike neighboring stations on the booth, no separate merch prize is awarded — the snacks themselves are the takeaway.
- 8
The Mind Player room shares the booth with other, unrelated Seara activations: a giant wind-powered air fryer for catching coupons, a paired wheel-and-search game, and a Chicken Supreme pool.
