7-Eleven’s become Kwik-E-Marts for Simpsons promotion

Posted by Chris

July 2, 2007

Kwik-E-Mart pic via http://flickr.com/photos/rdr07/ I briefly mentioned this a few months ago but now it seems 20th Century Fox has begun rolling out a large scale promotion for The Simpsons Movie. As AdAge reports, the studio has, as part of a promotional agreement with the convenience store chain, transformed a number of 7-Eleven stores across the country into recreations of the Kwik-E-Mart. 7-Eleven seems to be participating as a way to sort of poke fun at itself, acknowledging that it gets that it is the butt of the recurring joke on the show.

(Picture from rdr07.)

From AdAge:

The retail chain and FreshWorks, an Omnicom Group virtual-agency network led by Tracy Locke, Dallas, created more than 1,000 customized in-store displays and signs to bring the cartoon world to life. With the kind of detail reserved for Hollywood back lots, the transformation is all-encompassing — from exterior walls and signs to store fixtures and employee uniforms and name tags. Even donation canisters and ATMs will be made over with Krusty’s Kids and First Bank of Springfield logos. Stores will be made over by 6 a.m. July 1 in the U.S. and July 3 in Canada.

Completing the environment, nine life-size characters from the show will be placed in and out of each store, including Homer, Marge, Lisa, Maggie, store owner Apu, Chief Wiggum and Comic Book Guy. In addition, senior citizen Jasper will be hiding in the bagged ice freezer, and Bart and Milhouse will hang out on each stores’ roof.

To further blur reality and fiction, the team also collaborated with private-label manufacturers to create products from the show that will go on sale exclusively in all 6,400 domestic stores. 7-Eleven partnered with the Malt-O-Meal Co. to create the KrustyO’s frosted cereal and Cott Corp. to create Buzz Cola. 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.

You can read more coverage of this promotion at Beyond Madison Avenue, FirstShowing, Slashfilm, Merge, Lost Remote and a ton of other places.

If you go, as I did, to the 7-Eleven page for the Chicago Kwik-E-Mart location you’ll see it sends you to the SeeYellow.com site. It’s a list of some of the movie’s promotional partners. Clicking on through to the 7-11 portion shows there’s a sweepstakes you can enter to win an animated walk-on in a future episode of “The Simpsons.” You can enter with codes found on specially marked products in-store.