turnaround

It's pop culture commenting on pop culture commenting on itself. The question is getting the payoff on the joke -- that it's intelligent enough, smart enough, interesting enough where consumers go, 'Have I entered into "The Simpsons" or have I entered into advertising hell?'

Tim Stock, managing partner of Scenario DNA, commenting in today’s AdvertisingAge on 7-Eleven’s makeover for the month of July in which stores in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Burbank, Los Angeles, Las Vegas. New York, Lake Buena Vista, Seattle, Mountain View, Bladensburg, and Coquitlam, B.C. in Canada will become Kwik-E-Marts, featuring well-known goods from the Simpson’s series, including:

The store's frozen Slurpee beverage will be reinvented as the Kwik-E-Mart Squishee. The WooHoo! Blue Vanilla Squishees will come in 22-ounce paper cups with the fictional logo. Another surprise is that Simpsons' creator Matt Groening's Bongo Entertainment Group created a real comic book of Bart Simpson's favorite superhero, Radioactive Man, for sale during the promotion. The 32-page comic, numbered 711, will be wrapped in plastic and sell exclusively at the chain for $3.99.

And an aside: I met a fellow in Guatemala who lived in the U.S. for a while, whose happiest memories of the U.S. involved 7-Elevens. He went off at length about how they had everything, at any hour; how he loved the food, the Slurpees; how when he visited again, he brought home napkins with the logos, which he still kept safe and adored.

p.s. The transformation has already begun online »

Update: As of 25 July, the campaign has doubled store sales »