Over the past two years, the 7-Eleven Instagram account has been nurturing a relationship with a community that shares a love of both 7-Eleven and cars. What started as 7-Eleven posting UGC of some parked cars in front of the stores has grown into a following of over 900K fans that will ask us “where car?” when we don’t post car content.
We knew our fans loved to share their #Carsof7Eleven so we asked ourselves – what if there could be an official car of 7-Eleven – customized by our fans, and then created IRL for one lucky winner to drive away? And so Model 711 was born.
Our goal was to drive brand love by engaging our biggest fans, and incentivizing in-store purchases for a chance to win the Model 711 car. We would measure this brand love by increasing fan engagement/interactions with our posts, growing followers and expanding our social impressions/footprint.
Model 711 originated from a social-first insight centered around fan behavior: our fans love to take photos of their customized cars in front of our stores, and share them on social. The idea was anchored on 7-Eleven’s social channels, but expanded to meet our fans IRL in 7-Eleven stores. The winner would be chosen through a delivery & in-store sweepstakes, where purchase of eligible products gained entries to win the Model 711 car.
Over a 7-day period, we announced the campaign and published polls on Instagram and Twitter to give fans the opportunity to customize various car mods including the wrap design, rim color, seat design, custom grill and even the car’s scent through voting. The mods were inspired by the most iconic 7-Eleven products, including the Slurpee, Big Gulp, and Big Bite hot dog. On the final day, we revealed the final car design based on the winning mods.
Every aspect of the car, from the model, to each mod option, were meticulously selected - we didn’t just want a car that our fans voted on, but one they felt they were building together. So we sustained their engagement and interest by bringing them along the journey in two ways: sharing progress updates via IG Reels and TikTok, and producing a commercial that would run in paid media to build hype around the giveaway.
The biggest reveal within the progress updates included the car model reveal - a Ford Mustang. While collaborating with a high-profile automotive partner added production complexities, it was important that the campaign was authentic to the car community, and working with Ford helped to show our credibility in the community. From purchasing a car (and car insurance) on behalf of a brand to convincing Ford that turning the gear shift into a Slurpee cup is incredibly reasonable, we went the extra mile for our fans.
Media partnerships, custom integrations and sustained amplification supported the campaign from inception through final winner announcement. The commercial pod ran in various digital and social media channels, including a Rocket League Broadcast in between tournament games, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
Once the sweepstakes period ended, we worked with 7-Eleven to determine the winner but the celebration wasn’t over yet. Model 711 made an appearance at the Texas Motor Speedway Nascar race for a quick pit stop before being driven to New Jersey to hand the keys over. There, we produced a photoshoot with our winner and published the images on social channels to officially close the campaign and shine a light on the newest owner of Model 711. Our fans shared in the celebration with “I need that shift knob!! Congrats to the winner” comments, and of course: “There car.”
The Model 711 campaign proved that bringing fans and followers into the content drives higher engagement and increases affinity for the brand.
On organic social, the campaign generated 7.33M impressions, 486K interactions and resulted in 69.5K new followers on social.
