Swedes love their cinnamon buns so much they gave the baked goods their annual day — kanelbullens dag — offering sweet-toothed Swedes something special to celebrate. Every year on October 4th, Swedes celebrate Cinnamon Bun Day. Cafes, restaurants, and convenience stores across the country sell spiced Swedish buns. On Cinnamon Bun Day, no office is without cinnamon buns.

In the days around Swedish Cinnamon Bun Day, 7-Eleven, Sweden, sells hundreds of thousands of cinnamon buns. A big chunk of the buns are ordered by companies, so 7-Eleven wanted to make a podcast ad that promoted their highly appreciate B2B offers, which goes under the name "Bun-2-Business".

During Cinnamon Bun Day, the question is not whether Swedish offices will serve their staff cinnamon buns or not – it's a must-have – the question is where they will order these buns from. On October 4th, 7-Eleven is competing with every cafe and grocery store in Sweden, so the need to be top of mind is vital.

No business order is made without some kind of executive signing it off, or perhaps ordering it themselves. Therefore, the target audience for this campaign was business leaders and decision-makers at companies.

Our thesis was that business people have a fondness for two things: efficiency and coffee breaks. Therefore, we direct this spot towards business podcasts, where a large chunk of the listeners is speeding up their content.

We launched the ad the slow ad in the days prior to October 4th, kanelbullens dag. The podcast spot aired in some of Sweden's most prominent business, career, and news podcasts.

We didn't just want to slow down the ad in the post edit but instead record a voice-over artist that read the spot really slow. We went through a voice bank consisting of hundreds of voices to find the perfect one. After countless hours of listening to casting tapes, we found Christian Hillborg, famous for playing Erik, in the series Vikings. But, more important for this spot, he is also a great musician with a great ear and a feeling for tone and pitch. That made it possible for him to read the script in half the speed without it sounding strange when the speed-listeners played it at double speed.

On Cinnamon Bun Day, 7-Eleven, Sweden, reached a record number of bun sales by selling more than 138% more cinnamon buns than the year prior.