Adam Gartenberg's Blog

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• Author: Adam S Gartenberg
• January 7, 2008
• Category:  Marketing 

Living in the South (or at least, our part of the South), we don't have 7-11s, so I'm going to blame that for having missed this entirely.  

Over the summer, 7-11 ran a cross-promotion in conjunction with The Simpsons Movie, converting over a handful of 7-11 stores to real-life Kwik-E-Marts, complete with signage ("5 Minute Parking. Violators Will Be Executed;"  and, over the ATM:  "First Bank of Springfield. Misplacing Decimal Points Since 194.5"), not to mention the new paint and name (like you see in the Burbank 7-11 above).

Ad Age's Bob Garfield called this "among the most courageous acts in marketing history."

So, were the Marketing gurus right?  Did this actually translate to sales?  According to the Wall Street Journal, the promotion was one of the year's big successes.

"The 7-Eleven chain ... saw major sales lifts at the 11 U.S. stores that were converted for the month of the promotion. The company says total merchandise sales doubled; fresh bakery sales increased sevenfold and customer count went up almost 50%. Moreover, 7-Eleven says the promotion garnered about $7 million in free publicity. The 7-Eleven Web site on July 11 received 10,420,730 hits. The site typically gets an average of about 400,000 hits a day."

(Via Brand Autopsy)

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