Congratulations! 7-Eleven's Kwik-E-Mart marketing and merchandising promotion tied to last summer's popular film, "The Simpsons Movie" was named #2 on the list of best ads of 2007 by the Wall Street Journal. The advertisement for Dove's campaign for real beauty, where an average-looking woman transforms into a supermodel, was ranked #1.
Below is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal article on 7-Eleven's winning promotion:
D'Oh!, Client: "The Simpsons Movie," Agency: Omnicom Group's FreshWorks
Content: A part of a cross-promotion with News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox, 7-Eleven converted 12 of its stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional chain of convenience stores in the animated TV series. The stores even sold specially created items such as Squishees, the fictional frozen beverage similar to 7-Eleven's Slurpees; pink-frosted Sprinklicious doughnuts (a Homer favorite) and boxes of KrustyO's cereal.
Feedback: The movie has grossed more than $180 million domestically. The 7-Eleven chain, a unit of Japan's Seven & I Holdings Co., 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.
For a complete listing of the best of the worst ads of 2007, visit the Wall Street Journal's Web site.
