7-Eleven has entered the gaming space through a series of activations over the last several years - including programs with Rocket League and Twitch. In 2023, 7-Eleven challenged itself to engage gamers in a way that was uniquely 7-Eleven and completely ownable.

With the boom of car content and car fans on our social media platforms, this was a natural way to activate in the gaming space. Research showed that gamers – specifically Fortnite players – are 47% more likely to say that cars are among their primary interests. So the brief was to tap the intersection between gamers and our existing car fans, to grow affinity for 7-Eleven within the gaming audience.

We looked to deepen our relationship with our biggest fans and find a natural connection to our social media channels. The ultimate goal was to drive brand affinity and intention to visit stores.

Since fans have been asking “Where car” whenever 7-Eleven posts a car-less picture on Instagram, the brand decided to answer. We created “There Car”: A multiplayer activation in Fortnite, challenging players to discover and experience the largest ever in-game car meetup by getting them to find all of the (missing) 7-Eleven cars. Afterall, we were already their place for car meetups in the real world.

We introduced this idea by suddenly removing all of the car pictures from our social feed and didn’t have to wait long for them to notice. We knew that removing cars from our social feed would act as the perfect invitation to our game and help our biggest fans discover it first.

By tapping into an existing behavior amongst 7-Eleven fans and Fortnite players that over-index on interest in car culture, the activation created an engaging experience for gamers and car enthusiasts alike.

7-Eleven is an iconic brand that’s been in the United States for almost 100 years and continues to stay relevant by building a community of core fandoms – like car enthusiasts on social media and gamers.

We set out to find if and where our social media car fans and gaming fans intersect, and we found the perfect match. Fortnite players are 47% more likely to say that cars are among their primary interests, and Fortnite recently introduced driveable cars to their gameplay.

Fortnite is consistently among the world’s five most popular games, with 500+ million registered players. It was the perfect platform for 7-Eleven to seamlessly integrate and to build affinity with our key audiences in a highly customized experience.

We built a shared gaming and social media car community experience and amplified it with influencers at the crossover between cars and gaming, to multiply engagement among both audiences.

One of the famous visual phenomena in Fortnite is called a “rift.” These rifts are used for teleportation to hidden spaces in the game. They are highly recognizable to the audience and known for sparking conversation. To launch, the famous rift appeared in our Instagram feed. Cars disappeared into these rifts, and our fans immediately got it – lighting up our comments to understand how they could get involved.

To grow excitement, we partnered with influencers at the intersection between gaming and cars to engage their fans. Getting them to battle each other in Twitch co-streams to find the missing cars.

Over two weeks, hundreds-of-thousands of fans competed in a hunt to find 7-Eleven branded cars within Fortnite. Once they did, they unlocked access to “There Car Island,” filled with exciting cars to experience. More importantly, they found their own new social car community hiding within their favorite gaming community.

When your fans ask you a question like “Where Car?” it pays to listen. The “There Car” campaign kept a 100 year old brand relevant by finding the intersection between, and growing affinity among, two core fandoms: car enthusiasts on social and gamers.

We went deep with our target with 667,000 people playing and gameplay averaging 31 minutes - three times Fortnite’s benchmark. The campaign had 320 million impressions, 456 media placements, and had a significant increase in brand metrics in brand lift studies.

Beyond relevance and scale this activation created brand intention – people who engaged with the campaign were 11% more likely to agree that “7-Eleven is a brand for them” and 7% more likely to “plan to shop at 7-Eleven weekly.”

We succeeded in building the largest in-game car meetup - but the real win was building a new social community inside our fans’ favorite game.