7-Eleven leveraged the popularity of American Football and capitalized on a sports story sparked by NFL star Ja’Marr Chase’s comments about being “always open,” like the convenience store. This inspired the Always Open collaboration, an equity building sports partnership between Ja’Marr Chase and 7-Eleven, which drove brand affinity and engagement with sports fans, for both parties.

By integrating into a live sporting event with Ja’Marr Chase, then driving the message on social media and allowing fans to own a piece of the partnership, the campaign connected millions of sports fans with the 7-Eleven brand and translated to tangible commercial success.

With an average of 18 million viewers per game and 184 million fans (approximately 50% of the U.S. population), the NFL is one of the world’s most popular sporting leagues. Ja’Marr Chase is one of the league’s superstars and one of the best at his position, wide receiver. His role on the field is to always stay open to catch passes.

Following a loss where Ja’Marr was consistently open, but didn’t get thrown the ball, he began referring to himself as “7-11,” the iconic store that famously stays open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He broadcast this message in TV interviews and across social media, without any prompting from the brand.

7-Eleven has focused on football as a fandom for multiple years, with programs such as “Fuel your Football” and “Cleat Crew,” building a shared affinity between 7-Eleven and American football fans. Therefore, Ja’Marr Chase’s comments represented the perfect opportunity to react quickly and generate positive engagement with football fans, for both Ja’Marr Chase and 7-Eleven.

Situation: In American football, the objective of a wide receiver is to break open for passes and score touchdowns, and Ja'Marr Chase is one of the NFL's elite players. Following a few frustrating games where he was consistently open but did not receive the ball, Ja'Marr organically took to social media and TV interviews dubbing himself "7-Eleven." His intent was to highlight his constant openness as a wide receiver, akin to 7-Eleven's "always open" hours of operation.

Objective and Brief: Identifying this breaking sports news and social trend, we needed to respond swiftly and strategically to leverage the moment and spark conversation around the brand to solidify 7-Eleven's presence in American Football culture.

We realized the opportunity was huge. Ja’Marr’s TV interview reached 184 million NFL fans, and his social media post “7-11” received 5.8 million views on X. In addition, Ja’Marr has 1.7M active followers on his social media accounts. Our goal was to reach these NFL fans who have a huge overlap with 7-Eleven’s customer base of 12 million daily customers.

This data showed a particularly strong opportunity for 7-Eleven to reach millions through a collaboration with Ja’Marr. The approach would be to leverage Ja’Marr’s comments, the scale of NFL live game viewership, 7-Eleven’s fast-growing fashion merchandise platform (7Collection.com), and the power of immediacy that social can bring, to generate conversation around 7-Eleven, further ingrain the brand into American Football culture, and drive positive sentiment for 7-Eleven and Ja’Marr across channels.

The brand responded with “Always Open:” a real-time, reactive partnership between Ja’Marr Chase and 7-Eleven that celebrates what it means to “Always be Open.” Capitalizing on Ja'Marr's reference to himself as "7-Eleven," within 48 hours, we created a clothing line, in-game activation, and social campaign inspired by his interviews and social posts.

Our idea continued to build the conversation by ingraining the association between 7-Eleven and Ja’Marr Chase in sports culture. 7-Eleven figured out how to appear across TV and social media platforms in placements where the NFL typically bans any type of brands. This included on the field during the game and during the walk to the locker room in pre-game.

Leveraging his enormous fanbase, Ja'Marr launched the merchandise collection on social media, directing traffic to our website, IsJamarrOpen.com, for purchase.

Less than 24 hours after Ja’Marr Chase spontaneously referred to himself as “7-11,” 7-Eleven signed a deal with Ja’Marr and collaborated on a fashion line featuring his comments on hats and t-shirts. We also created a branded gold chain necklace for him to wear.

Brands are typically banned from being featured during NFL games other than in very specific placements that have high media price tags. However, at Ja’Marr’s next game - just one week after his initial comment – we got the 7-Eleven brand to show up all over the game…with no media cost.

Ja’Marr wore the “Always Open” t-shirt during the televised walk to the locker room - showing off the 7-Eleven brand as part of his pregame fashion. Then, during the game, he wore the gold 7-Eleven necklace on the field. After multiple catches, he pulled it out and flashed it at the camera, yelling "7-Eleven."

Reach and engagement were strong and immediate. During the live broadcast of the game, the campaign reached 18M+ viewers. Over the course of the first week, the campaign earned over 500 million social and traditional media impressions, with over 99% positive sentiment for Ja’Marr Chase and 7-Eleven.

Every major broadcaster and outlet in American sports media covered the campaign, including Sports Illustrated, ESPN, USA Today, SBNation, Bleacher Report, CBS Sports, Fox News, DraftKings, Barstool Sports, BroBible and more.

As a result of the robust reach and social engagement, the Always Open collection sold out in less than 48 hours, as did the restock. 7-Eleven’s website saw the 2nd-highest-ever visitors, the “7-11” tweet t-shirt was the 2nd-best-selling 7-Eleven merchandise item in history, and it all led to $166,167 in sales in just the first week, with items continuing to sell rapidly today, over 6 months after the campaign ended.