This summer’s biggest waste of marketing dollars? Harry Potter & The Simpson’s Movie

There was no point in spending a dime on advertising for either one. Marketing them was like doing PR for YouTube: Sit there and watch the fish jump in your boat. That said, co-branding with these two things was a GREAT idea. I was down in Orlando last week and went to one of the 7-Eleven’s that were rethemed as a Kwik E Mart and I loved it. All they did was throw up some signs and boom! A hit was born. (I’ll post my pics at some point in the future. Best signage was the one of Hans Moleman frozen in the ice machine). Place was mobbed.

I haven’t seen any co-branding with HP & The Deathly Hallows, has anyone else?

Quick reviews (without spoilers):

Harry Potter & The Great Big Bags of Cash: The final HP was too long by about a third but better than I expected it to be. The actual writing, i.e. sentence structure and syntax, was much better than in the last two. In 5 &6 I approached each sentence concerned that I wouldn’t be able to find my way out once I started in. There were several things that seemed invented just for book seven — like a certain species’ use of a different type of magic — that felt like they were there only because the author had painted herself into a corner. Apparently Ms. Rowling feels that having characters wander around pointlessly builds tension or something.

Simpson’s Movie: It’s about a B to B+ episode. At 1.5 hrs long, it doesn’t suffer from the bloat and padding that seems to go along with most movies of TV shows. Also they didn’t let it get over run by guest stars. Tom Hanks is great and I was quite pleased to see Green Day go down with the ship. My only real complaint is that we were promised screen time for ALL the secondary characters and I do believe they missed one: God. The bearded one was conspicuously absent. Next time guys. Also, I want more musical numbers.

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Mmmmmm … marketing: 7-Eleven converting some stores to Kwik-E-Marts

As a tie-in with the upcoming Simpson’s movie, the convenience store chain will remodel 11 of its stores to resemble Apu Nahasapeemapetilon’s place of business. “Customers also will be able to buy products inspired by the nearly two-decades-old show, including KrustyO’s cereal, Buzz Cola and iced Squishees (the cup says Squishee, but the contents will be Slurpee). The chain also will use pictures of Simpsons characters to promote 7-Eleven’s line of fresh foods, such as placing the face of Homer and his classic “Mmmm . . . sandwich” quip on sandwich wrappers.” Gotta say, fresh food is NOT the first thing I think of when you say Kwik-E-Mart. More like year-old hot dogs and over-priced everything.

Oddly there’s no indication that any of the converted stores will be in anywhere named Springfield.

FYI: Here’s a link to the official list of the locations of Kwik-E-7-Elevens. And a Flickr group of photos can be seen here.

White Sox get $500K for six minutes of … nothing.

7-Eleven is paying  the team an average of a half-million dollars a year to change the start time of night games from 7:05 & 7:35 to 7:11. (Why do baseball games start five minutes after the hour or half hour?) How much will they give me to change my son’s bedtime?