Better late than never: 7-Eleven wakes up, smells the iced coffee

7-Eleven is hopping on the iced-coffee bandwagon about two years after everyone else. Starting this summer, they're putting iced-coffee machines in 4,500 U.S. stores, along with a marketing blitz of "radio spots and outdoor, metro rail and bus transit advertising ... as well as online viral marketing and an iced coffee microsite." The campaign targets millennials, who drink more iced coffee than any other age group, and the print ads are built around saucy phrases like "I look good in any cup size," and "Trust me, I'm a handful." They've got a lot of other strong brands to compete with (Starbucks and McDonalds, for example), and invoking their history of being the first to sell coffee-to-go is useless in a consumer culture that won't remember or care. But 7-Eleven is reliable and open late, so they could do well for themselves here. Provided their iced coffee doesn't suck, of course. Also, let's hope they actually have stores where they place the ads. Growing up in North Carolina, where there were no 7-Elevens, I saw those "Oh, thank heaven" commercials ad exhibitions of supreme cruelty.

—Posted by David Kiefaber