The conventional wisdom in convenience retailing has long held that customers come for the gasoline and stay for the roller hot dogs. But 7-Eleven, the Irving, Texas-based chain that operates more than 13,000 stores in North America, is betting that what the modern consumer really wants is a love story — preferably one that unfolds in seven episodes and features prominent placement of Gochujang Boneless Wings.
Beginning Nov. 2, the company will introduce "A Convenient Love," a branded miniseries designed to promote its Flavors of Korea menu, which includes items from Bibigo, the Korean food brand owned by CJ CheilJedang. Each episode will spotlight a different dish and be accompanied by limited-time discounts, in what amounts to a serialized advertisement dressed in the conventions of streaming romance.
The campaign arrives at a moment when Korean cultural exports — from television dramas to pop music to fried chicken — have achieved a level of American penetration that would have seemed implausible a decade ago. 7-Eleven, which has spent recent years trying to reposition itself as something more than a pit stop for Slurpees and lottery tickets, appears to have noticed.
(The miniseries format, it should be noted, is not entirely new to the brand. Convenience stores have been selling romance of a sort for years, though usually in the form of greeting cards and the occasional wilting bouquet near the register.)
The creative conceit — that love might blossom beneath fluorescent lighting, over a shared order of Spicy Chicken Dumplings — draws on survey data suggesting that 9 percent of couples report meeting through chance encounters. Whether the aisles of a 7-Eleven qualify as the sort of chance encounter the respondents had in mind is, perhaps, a question best left unexamined.
The campaign will run across the chain's social channels, where the target audience presumably already spends a good deal of time.
Original story published in adweek.com: "7-Eleven Bets on Korean Food and Drama with a Spicy New Social Miniseries"