Pizza with Everything
7-Eleven is serving up Pizza and a Movie this summer to tout its fresh foods, especially the just-launched P’EatZZa Sandwich. The chain’s two May-June promotions are its first all-out entertainment push and its most ambitious promotion slate since CEO Joe DePinto took charge of the 5,800-store chain in December.
7-Eleven is embracing entertainment — think movies, video games and music — to build its reputation among time-starved, highly mobile consumers, especially young men.
“Focus on the customer is the religion around here,” says 7-Eleven’s VP-Marketing Doug Foster. “We did a vigorous analysis of how these consumers spend their time, and what their passion points are — some sports, and entertainment, especially movies. [So] we’ll be doing increasingly more in the entertainment space. We want to foster a reputation for that.”
First up is a month-long tie-in to 20th Century Fox’s X-Men: The Last Stand, premiering May 26. An online sweeps, touted in-store, will award four grand-prize trips to the set of the movie, Fox’s finale in its X-Men trilogy. 7-Eleven awards one trip each week in May. Smaller instant-win prizes include copies of X-Men: The Official Game video game launching this month, DVDs of the first two X-Men films and soundtrack CDs. Sweeps entrants get a downloadable coupon for $1 off a P’eatZZa Sandwich.
In 20 markets, radio station tie-ins give away 200 tickets in each market to an exclusive 7:11 p.m. screening of the film on May 25, the night before its official premiere.
Shoppers who buy a P’eatZZa Sandwich in May get a rent-one, get-one certificate from Blockbuster. (Blockbuster’s 3,000 stores also distribute coupons for $1 off P’eatZZa Sandwich; 7-Eleven distributes coupons for the Activision video game.)
Plus, Slurpee gets special X-Men-themed flavors, and cups will carry collectible discs featuring six film characters.
7-Eleven also gets product placement for the store itself and flagship brands like Slurpee in the movie and in Activision’s game. Both deals were negotiated by agency-of-record FreshWorks, a collaboration of Omnicom-owned agencies (see sidebar).
A second film tie-in follows in June to keep momentum behind P’eatZZa and TwistAs, twisted-dough pizzas that add a Supreme flavor this season. “We want to put some horsepower behind P’eatZZa because it’s so unique,” Foster says.
The cold, wedge-shaped sandwich uses cheese-and-pepperoni flatbread and deli meat and cheese; the two flavors are Turkey and Pepperoni, or Ham and Salami.
7-Eleven and FreshWorks chose X-Men: The Last Stand for its broad appeal, and will tie in with multiple films this summer to lower the risk of picking a flop, and to reach a broader audience among the 6 million customers the chain serves each day.
7-Eleven teased the April 18 launch of P’EatZZa Sandwich with an appearance on The Apprentice last month. Apprentice teams’ task was to help launch the sandwich, leveraging 7-Eleven’s sponsorship of Tony Kanaan’s Indy Racing League car and team, Andretti Green Racing. 7-Eleven wanted a few weeks between the launch and its X-Men blitz “to give stores a chance to get the product in and make sure the staff is oriented for the promotion. But we couldn’t resist having a teaser upfront,” Foster laughs.
The Pizza and a Movie campaign falls under 7-Eleven’s Retailer Initiative strategy that lets each store set its product mix for the local market. Headquarters lets stores try new products, then choose which to carry, and for how long. That means marketing is “built from a store of one, on up,” Foster says. “It’s integrated, customized marketing across a large geography.”
Stores must all participate in the national promos, but field teams help tailor P-O-P, displays and product mix to suit local tastes. For example, Pizza and a Movie end-aisle displays mimic movie-theater concession stands. 7-Eleven’s category managers compiled the list of snacks, beverages and candies suited to movie snacking, but local store managers choose which products to put on the displays. “We stay on strategy, but we can still tailor it across the country,” Foster says.
Store managers like big promos, says FreshWorks COO Sandi Means: “The promotions drive store traffic, and that’s what they want, no matter what the product mix.”
CEO DePinto — who was 7-Eleven’s VP-operations from May 2003 to March 2005 before an eight-month stint as president of video game retailer GameStop Corp. — champions Retailer Initiative and the urgency to focus on consumers, Foster says. “It’s a buyer’s market, so we have to be there for customers with the right product at the right time. There’s a real push worldwide at 7-Eleven to do more innovative customer promotions.
“We’re at an interesting intersection: People expect speedy service from us, but not fresh items,” Foster adds. “We pull off both.”
Like superheroes.
The FreshWorks Behind Fresh Food
Before 7-Eleven partnered with 20th Century Fox and Activision, it had FreshWorks.
Last fall, Omnicom Group tapped its four promo agencies (Tracy-Locke, The Integer Group, TPN and Dieste Harmel & Partners) to form FreshWorks to pitch, then serve 7-Eleven’s integrated marketing account.
For 2006, FreshWorks approached Fox for X-Men: The Last Stand, then called Activision.
“In an alliance, we look at each partner’s assets and needs so that in the end everyone feels like they’ve won,” says Bobbi Merkel, TracyLocke’s director of strategic alliances.
FreshWorks COO Sandi Means coordinates the agencies’ work. “Among the four core agencies, one usually takes the lead, then calls in the others to brief the whole team” of account and creative reps from each shop, Means says. TracyLocke, Dallas, took the lead on Pizza and a Movie; TPN, also Dallas, handled P-O-P; Dieste Harmel helped with Hispanic overlays. (The shop also handles general-market work for FreshWorks.)
— BS
