7-Elevens on a journey to refresh its identity to resonate with today’s younger generations. Their new mantra of “take it to eleven” is a call to action to dial-up everything in life. With the goal of authentic brand engagement, dentsu created a hyper unique, wildly popular campaign developed through a social media insight from a large and loyal group: The car culture community. On 7-Eleven’s Instagram page, fans are always asking, “Where car?” which translates to asking why there isn’t a car in the photo. Posing with your car in front of a 7-Eleven location, dubbed a Carfie, became a trend over the past few years. So, our team answered back with a challenge: “Find car” using a virtual scavenger hunt in Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular video games, to engage fans, gamers and customers.
To invite fans and gamers to “Find car”, 7-Eleven tapped into Gaming which is so widespread and pervasive, it’s considered an arbiter of culture and what’s cool. There are millions of gamers in the US, and billions around the world, and it made sense to lean in as a channel because of how much time and attention is spent there. Especially for the younger generations, where gaming is a core part of their lifestyle and habits. Gaming provides meaningful and impactful avenues for deepening relationships with our target audience. Furthermore, 7-Eleven carries products that can be described as “gamer fuel.” From drinks to snacks to food delivered, 7-Eleven can help gamers stay in the game.
In partnership with SuperAwesome, experts in deep integrations into digital and gaming platforms, the team launched a robust campaign utilizing paid, earned and owned media centered around a branded experience in Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular video games. The campaign allowed players and fans to engage with the brand and showcase its relevance to car culture in new and unexpected ways. The Fortnite experience featured a rich ecosystem of audience touchpoints around a virtual scavenger hunt across three popular game maps. Players were challenged to find three custom 7-Eleven branded cars each with portions of a code that transported you to a unique 7-Eleven island in the game. The island included interactive elements such as a racetrack, dozens of cars to check out and an invitation for gamers to pose with the cars for a chance to win a sweepstakes featuring branded items such as a custom gaming chair, a virtual gamertag statue on the island and discounts at 7-Eleven and Speedway locations. A mix of organic and paid social, influencer activations, live streamed events and other paid media drove awareness and prompted participation in the scavenger hunt.
The campaign proved that a single, yet powerful insight can turn into a tremendously successful campaign driving tangible results across brand performance and real-world metrics such as foot traffic. Primary metrics such as 8MM views of creator content, over 666k total lifetime plays and a +7 lift in survey respondents saying they visit a 7-Eleven location weekly signaled campaign success while the effort also overdelivered on media metrics including video views, view-through-rate and click-through-rate. Most importantly, brand metrics such as perception, brand love and purchase intent in the form of foot traffic increased as a result of the campaign. Finally, almost 300 million earned media impressions were generated as people everywhere revealed how they were able to “Find car”. The dentsu team will continue to take it to eleven by mining valuable data to build upon the campaign’s success in gaming and other platforms relevant to 7-Eleven’s customers.
