Marketing is for professionals. Long gone are the days when marketing is buying an ad in the newspaper, finding a billboard to plaster your phone number, and giving away a free desk calender to those who open up a new account with you.Doug Foster, 7-Eleven's chief marketing officer, has received and taken advantage of a golden opportunity. As 7-Eleven has been mocked in the many episodes of the Simpsons (although called Kwik-E Mart, we all knew it was 7-11), the company is revamping 12 stores across the United States and Canada to look and feel like a Kwik-E Mart.
The stores first off have changed their facade, completely wiping 7-11 off the face of their store (bold and fun move). And then from there are filling the shelves with new Simpson's mentioned merchandise, like Buzz Cola, Frosted Krusty-0's and a plastic wrapped edition of the comic book Radioactive Man.
Even employee uniforms and name tags get the re-boot. If there was ever a time to be a 7-11 employee, now is the time.
The promotion started today and will run through the month of July as the movie is released on July 27th.
The preparations of this project has been a long 2 year process that ideally coolifies 7-11 for a season, helps promote the movie, and probably helps various companies and brands increase sales as they create spoofed products.
Kate Macarthur's AdAge story can be found here. And to those lucky enough to live in the 12 places where Kwik-E Mart's are located (Chicago; Dallas; Denver; Burbank, Calif.; Los Angeles; Las Vegas; New York; Lake Buena Vista, Fla.; Seattle; Mountain View, Calif.; Bladensburg, Md.; and Coquitlam, B.C., Canada), I'd love to here about your experience if you go.
Now the question is which store is Apu working at?
Related Tags: Kwik-E Mart, Advertising, Marketing, the Simpsons, 7-11, Doug Foster, 7-Eleven, Movie Promotion
5 comments:
VERY creative marketing. I'll have to check the Burbank one out sometime. We'll see if I can convince Grete we need to visit a convenience store that's 20 minutes away :).
chicago? really??
hey, since the 50's ads were highly skilled, psychologically adept and professional.
do you think the word 'teenager' just popped out of thin air? marketing niche created for madison market. honestly. check it out.
but if you think marketing is over for the little guys, that's why we got the internet. so that everything can be saturated with ads.
Yep, the Chicago one is at 6754 W. 63rd Street. See here.
My stepdad has been to the Dallas one. He bought some Krusty O's and said that the Vietnamese manager was wearing an "Apu" smock and that the slurpees are called Squishies.
I went back to the one in Coquitlam, BC. The line-ups outside had died down, but the action inside the store was about the same. Still sold out of Krusty-O's though.
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