Sunday, October 26, 2008

7-Eleven Election Genius. Hail to the Beans



Many of us that live by a 7-Eleven convenient store know that when purchasing a cup of coffee you have 3 choices. a Red John McCain Cup, Blue Barack Obama cup or the generic 7-Eleven cup to pour a nice cup of Java into. Without going into what I chose, I was quite impressed at how they are capturing the data. They scan the bar code on the cup and the cash register recognizes your choice. Thinking about this, I actually got excited at how innovative 7-Eleven is, and how something so simple can be potentially a very accurate polling process. Let start at the hundreds of polls currently conducted, I am not a polling expert, but I am thinking the pollsters make enough phone calls to make a statistically relevant poll.

Its almost comical how one poll has one candidate ahead while another poll has another. We know nothing about how they conducted it, nor do we really care. Its just a scoreboard of sorts, and more of a stage to debate with family or friends who will win or not.

The only thing predictable about presidential polls lately is how unpredictable they are and this is where 7-Eleven can make the argument that their Data is based on people choosing to walk out the store with. I would go as far as saying choosing a candidates cup is comparable to wearing a pin of that candidate. If you were a supporter of Obama, chances are you are not getting a McCain Cup, and if you choose to keep it private, you would most likely go with the generic 7-Eleven Cup.

WOW

I would actually love to see CNN report the 7-Eleven poll. This would be no joke here. It has alot of merit.

7-Eleven is claiming they customers correctly choose the winner of the last 2 Presidential Elections... I believe it.

In 2000 George Bush outsold Al Gore by 1%. This is actually not very telling because we know that Al Gore won the Popular vote. But they are breaking results out by state.

In 2004 - they reported a few points in line with the presidential election. George Bush 51% and John Kerry 49%

So results with about a week left in the poll

Obama 60%
McCain 40%

More importantly,7-Elevens Data is showing Obama is beating McCain in every State. Again this is Coffee cups, but the intent of the consumer is hard not to take seriously.

Click Here for 7-Eleven Election.

The Execs at 7-Eleven really took an opportunity and making a believer out of me.


Lets look into the future. You have many other self service coffee franchises that can track the same way. Where does this lead to?

Does Coke and Pepsi purchase the right for their own cups for market research? Perhaps Not, but the data would be strong enough to show many brands how they stack up.

This is not just advertising on cups here, this is advertising with real time data. You just need to give the consumer a choice.

ACTIONS SPEAK MORE THAN WORDS

Whats your opinion?

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