7 Brands That Marketed Their Way Into the 2026 Eclipse

Solar eclipses have been giving people a reason to look up for thousands of years.

On August 12, 2026, brands found their own reasons to join the view.

Mastercard, Netflix, and IKEA all adapted the eclipse to fit familiar products, characters, and campaigns.

According to NASA, a total solar eclipse occurs roughly every 18 months, but any given location waits about 375 years to see one.

NASA's Kelly Korreck described the scientific value of the event as a chance to study the Sun's corona "in a way we can't from anywhere else in the solar system."

Brands get a narrow window to make their creative feel relevant, since the event supplies the reason for people to pay attention.

1. Mastercard

Mastercard UK recreated the eclipse through its own visual identity, with the red circle acting as the moon and the yellow circle representing the sun.

As the two circles overlap, they create the brand's familiar orange before disappearing into black, leaving an incomplete red-and-yellow outline.

The caption, "Total eclipse. Totally #priceless," ties the astronomical event directly to Mastercard's long-standing brand language.

2. Iberia

The Spanish airline took the most literal approach, changing its profile picture to reflect the eclipse and publishing a series of posts around the event.

Iberia also flew IB1473 over the province of Palencia with a team of Shelios researchers on board.

It streamed the eclipse live through Starlink Wi-Fi from above 10,000 meters.

The flight gave Iberia original footage from above the clouds and a credible reason to connect its core business with an event defined by its position in the sky.

3. Jaffa Cakes

Jaffa Cakes reached back to its 1999 "Full Moon, Half Moon" commercial, which famously used a Jaffa Cake to explain the mechanics of an eclipse.

For 2026, the brand recreated the premise with a Jaffa Cake covering the sun and the line, "Full moon, half moon… go on, say it."

The final phrase relies on audience recall, asking people familiar with the original ad to complete the reference themselves.

Nostalgia marketing gives McVitie's an asset it already owns, and audience recall does the work a new product story would need paid support to achieve.

4. Netflix

Netflix UK connected the eclipse to "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," letting the film's title do the entire creative job.

The post held a pair of eclipse glasses against a sunlit sky, with the film's poster visible through the lenses.

The execution also promotes the film's arrival on the platform on September 11.

Netflix gets a promotional hook for a 16-year-old catalog title with no new production spend, which is the cheapest content marketing available to it.

5. IKEA Austria

IKEA Austria took a more brand-specific route.

It plays on the rarity of the eclipse alongside the even rarer prospect of saying no to its famous Swedish meatballs.

The joke works because the brand does not need to explain the astronomy.

It can assume that its audience already understands the cultural significance of its food offering.

The creative shows how real-time marketing pays off when the event only has to set up a joke the brand already owns.

6. Starbucks

Starbucks UK connected the darkening sky to its coffee portfolio.

It placed its logo over the sun so the green siren stood in for the moon, paired with the copy, "serving dark…roast."

The eclipse provides the visual cue for darkness, and the copy points this straight back to coffee, giving the event a clear commercial role.

7. Red Bull

Red Bull put its athletes against the eclipse, capturing dramatic silhouettes of its bikers against the darkened sky.

The imagery pairs the stunt photography with the caption, "now THAT is how you make eclipse history."

It fits Red Bull’s established association with high-risk action and aerial stunts, giving the eclipse a role within the brand’s identity.

The silhouettes make the eclipse read as part of the stunt, which is how Red Bull keeps a borrowed event inside its own content library.

Two Minutes into the Eclipse Marketing Window

The 2026 eclipse's path of totality was roughly 294 kilometers wide.

Totality peaked at about 2 minutes and 18 seconds over the North Atlantic, between Greenland and Iceland.

Spain saw closer to 1 minute and 50 seconds, which is how little time a rare but predictable event actually gives marketers.

• Scarcity gives real-time marketing a natural deadline. Brands should prepare creative around predictable dates to capture attention.
• Visual constraints can make brand assets more useful. Marketers should design around a recognizable visual cue to make fast-scrolling creative easier to identify.
• Physical access can change the value of a live event. Brands should check what access their own operations already give them, then film the event from there.

Scarcity attracts attention on its own, and brand relevance decides whether this attention has somewhere useful to go.

Our Take: What Makes Eclipse Marketing Worth Repeating?

The smartest executions give the eclipse a job within an existing brand idea.

We think astronomical events are easy to reference and much harder to own.

Rare events reward brands with fixed visual assets, which is why a logo or a 27-year-old ad line beats anything written on the day.

The next one arrives on August 2, 2027, over southern Spain and North Africa with more than six minutes of totality.

Marketers have a full year to prepare something they actually own.

The eclipse joins a wider trend of brands reacting quickly to cultural events, where a recognizable voice helped timely creative stand out.

Want your brand to respond faster to cultural events with relevant creative?

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