Mountain Dew is bringing 7-Eleven to the Dew Tour this summer.
The convenience store chain will be the first retailer to receive pass-through rights to the Dew Tour. Mountain Dew secured that ability when the PepsiCo brand negotiated a new title sponsorship deal with the tour in 2011.
Under terms of the agreement, 7-Eleven will receive advertising spots on NBC, NBC Sports Network and DewTour.com. It also receives display space for on-site activation at the three Dew Tour events. In Ocean City, Md., which will host the Dew Tour Beach Championships June 20-23, 7-Eleven plans to bring a custom Slurpee truck to the event.
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7-Eleven will distribute cans featuring athletes Danny Davis and Paul Rodriguez.
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Mountain Dew last week filmed a co-branded commercial spot with 7-Eleven that features some of the soda brand’s athletes, including skater Paul Rodriguez, snowboarder Danny Davis and skater Keelan Dadd. PepsiCo and 7-Eleven will share the production costs for the spot, which will run during Dew Tour programming in the coming months.
“As there’s more scrutiny on sports properties, we need to be able to activate at retail,” said Todd Kaplan, Mountain Dew’s director of brand marketing. “We have a number of key retailers, but 7-Eleven is such a great fit because 7 million shoppers walk through 7-Elevens every day.”
In addition to the commercial, 7-Eleven will be the exclusive distributor of Mountain Dew cans that feature Rodriguez and Davis. It is the first time that Mountain Dew has featured athletes on its cans in more than six years. The last time it did was when it put Shaun White on cans, and he was last endorsed by the brand in 2007.
Kaplan said that Mountain Dew remains pleased with the new format of the Dew Tour. The brand pushed the tour to contract from seven events in 2011 to three events last year, and Kaplan said they were pleased with the new sport disciplines they were able to add and the improved TV production.
“We’re coming off a great first year with this new model,” Kaplan said. “We’re looking to evolve it and take it to the next level with [the addition of] a key business partner in 7-Eleven.”
