7 Eleven's Best Brain Freeze Giveaway Ever

National Slurpee fountain 7-Eleven is giving away free Slurpees for its birthday + its 95th birthday, and all you have to do is... download their mobile app.

If you've been reading for a while now, you know this is how chains like 7-Eleven have been promoting their apps in the last few years. It works pretty well when you have a signature item to give away, like chicken nuggets for McDonald's.

This isn't the first time Slurpees have been offered for downloads. But unlike previous summers, this giveaway was, by far, the most effective.

Let's set some foundation. 7-Eleven gets roughly 50,000 downloads a week across the App Store and Google Play, according to our estimates.

In 2019, the giveaway generated roughly 280,000 downloads during campaign week. A massive increase from the average.

Covid lockdowns have slowed downloads down in 2020 and 2021, where 7-Eleven saw 152,000 and 162,000 downloads, respectively, according to our estimates. But like many other IRL apps, 2022 was the year things go boom, and downloads certainly followed!

Our estimates show that this week downloads skyrocketed to more than 452,000, and that's not even the entire week! That's a gigantic leap over the best giveaway week back in 2019.

What I found interesting in this campaign is that through the app, you can have a free Slurpee delivered to you. That's right!

If you read between the lines here, you'll see that these chains are all in war right now. A war over digital mindshare, which really means the ability to push notifications to potential customers.

Although this isn't a new trend, it's obvious not all chains are executing on it as well, which means we as customers are going to undoubtedly see more promotions and more free stuff. But just like streaming last year, I don't expect this trend to last too too long.