The Simpsons movie tie-in with 7-11 got lots of digital ink last summer. Marketers, like Jake McKee, raved about it and shared photos galore. Evangelists created a blog about it. Even Advertising Age critic Bob Garfield cooed about it.
No doubt ... 3 out of 4 marketers would agree this movie promotion was a creative success. What about a sales success? After all, sales is the true measure of a marketing campaign.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the promotion was a sales success.
"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."
With thoses numbers It would be tempting to open some long term Kwik-E-Mart's.
I wonder what shows will be next?
Posted by: Dennis Ray Nestor Jr. | January 04, 2008 at 05:26 PM
Tempting, yes ... but possibly foolish. We marketers like to go back to proverbial well one too many times in search of sales.
HOWEVER, what if a regional convenience store chain was to forge some relationship with "The Simpsons" and rebrand their whole operation as Kwik-E-Mart. Hmm...
Posted by: johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) | January 05, 2008 at 12:24 AM
It would be interesting to see them convert one 7-11 into a Kwik-E-Mart permanently to see the effects. Perhaps in Illinois? ; )
Posted by: Shama Hyder | January 05, 2008 at 01:19 PM
Shama ... great thought. It sure would be interesting to see 7-11 converted one of its stores into a destination spot one-of-a-kind Kwik-E-Mart.
Posted by: johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) | January 05, 2008 at 09:56 PM
The question I would ask is do the sales results tell us more about the effectiveness of the promotion or the state of the 7-11 brand?
If stores that you re-branded doubled their sales wouldn't that have you asking questions about the strength of your brand?
Posted by: Stephen Macklin | January 06, 2008 at 08:50 AM