Monday was National Slurpee Day in Australia. I know. I can’t believe I’m blogging about a frozen flavoured ice either. But there you go. Today’s marketing lesson is brought to you by the frozen flavoured drinks Jedi knights of 7-Eleven. Boy, did they have their marketing light sabers out on this campaign.The marketing folks at 7-Eleven had the brilliant marketing idea to give their famous slurpee away. A very expensive idea you would think but I think is a very smart marketing campaign. The campaign is essentially a well executed word of mouth marketing campaign with little media spend from what I can see. There are reports online that some stores have run out, I’ve also seen photo’s that people have posted where they have gone to multiple stores to get free slurpees. I even got an email from a colleague at work telling everyone to go get one. Word of mouth win!
Here are the five lessons anyone can take away from this campaign:
Lesson #1: Increased and new foot traffic on your property
By giving their product away 7-Eleven will definitely have had increased foot traffic in their stores. They will also have people who don’t normally go into a 7-Eleven store just because they are having this promotion. If only 10% buy something else they will make the money back what they are investing in this.
Giving something away will result in people coming who never normally visit you. Once they are at your property help them to become a repeat visitor and give them another reason to come back. In business you may be have another special offer. In the non-profit world it may be an invite to an event or an initiative that they may be interested in.
When I give something away on my blog I always have an increase in traffic. I always make sure that what I give away is socially spread as part of the conditions of winning. This brings more virtual foot traffic in my case.
Lesson #2: Timing is everything
Summer is has just arrived in Australia. If 7-Eleven wanted to remind the customer their product was there for the upcoming summer it is a very cheap way to do it at the start of what could be a long hot summer. I would imagine now people will have a higher recall about the slurpee they had on the next hot day.
Timing of your marketing idea is crucial. Imagine if 7-Eleven had this promotion in winter. How many people would it drive back to their stores over the following months?
Lesson #3: Celebrate something
7-Eleven had their celebration on the 7/11 which is a good link to the brand. But then no one really cares too much about that when you are giving something yummy away for nothing.
Your celebration can be an anniversary, birthday of a significant person or a significant milestone. Whatever you do celebrate! People will always rally around a celebration. The increased good will towards your organisation will be hard to measure, but it will definitely rise.
Lesson #4: Make your marketing idea social
This campaign has certainly made 7-Eleven and Slurpee a very talkable brand today. In my Facebook feed I saw at least 3 people comment directly on the giveaway with many others commenting about it. Here is one below that had 13 people commenting or liking a mum’s experience with her son. One insightful commentator even noted the good publicity it will bring 7-Eleven.
I know that the Twitter chatter and sentiment is also high towards slurpees. Here are just a few examples:
So you need to ask yourself – is you marketing idea talkable? Is it going to make your peers spread the news themselves and do the marketing for you?
A good example of this campaign being talkable is the very fact that I’m talking about it. That’s a win for them. Lifehacker promoted it for free on their Australian site. Free publicity is gold for marketeers.
Lesson #5: Run competitions on your Facebook page
7-Eleven cleverly held the “Win free slurpee’s for a year” competition on their Facebook page. All people had to do was like their Facebook page. Imagine all those new likes and all of the people who will see the 7-Eleven and slurpee brand in their Facebook timeline in the future. Another win is that they will be able to break down the demographics extremely well of who their audience is because of Facebook insights. That is every marketeers dream right there.
Another smart move from 7-Eleven was to hold a photo competition. If you upload your photo and win, you get 1 months free slurpee’s. I love photo competitions where you have to vote for your friend because it means the people who entered the photos will be sharing their photos with their friends. That is a talkable brand if ever I saw one.
The social channel of this campaign is a great example how organisations should be using social media to further their reach.
At the time of writing this post 11,000 people were talking about slurpee’s on Facebook. 11,000 free adverts for their brand. That is priceless social media if ever I saw it.
Over to you. What do you think about the campaign? Love it or hate it? How would you do something like this in what you do?
