Joe Reske

To promote 7-Eleven’s commitment to gaming, I led a team to create an engaging digital, in-store, and social media program connecting our brand to Rocket League and its passionate community of car modders.

The campaign had four primary components:

1. In-store unlockables—My team worked directly with the team at Psyonix (the developers of Rocket League) to create six limited-edition unlockable in-game cosmetics inspired by Slurpee and Big Bite Hot Dogs.

2. Digital promotion/content marketing—My team partnered with key influencers to promote each unlockable item with a top esports team (NRG), gaming site (IGN), and celebrities celebrating auto racing (Toni Breidinger) and soccer (Cristo Fernandez).

3. In-person sponsorship—I helped negotiate 7-Eleven as a title sponsor of the Slurpee Cup Spring Regional and as a major sponsor of the Spring Rocket League Championship Series.

4. Social engagement—Online fan votes determined custom elements to add to a real Ford Mustang to create the ultimate 7-Eleven car. Not only that—we gave away the car as our sweepstakes grand prize!

We drove 50,000+ new followers over eight weeks, sold out of all unlockables, and drove double-digit sales for participating items.

I led the team and agency in concepting, building, and executing the Fuel Your Fandom program at 7-Eleven. We activated the program in-store and through owned and paid social channels, digital and online video, and earned media events tied to veterans activation.

I guided and supervised all the creative content and media planning with our agencies and led the team in developing key metrics. After creating the selection processes and methodology across three entry points—user-generated online content, in-store sweepstakes, and online application—my team selected the final 6-person crew.

To kick off the relationship, I created and managed a 2-day, in-person event to onboard the influencers and capture content. In that session and over the following eight months, the new crew captured and released 100+ pieces of social media content to promote key product launches, limited-time promotions, and other collaborations. My team was instrumental in maintaining ongoing engagement with the crew (although our social media team handled several of the individual content briefs).

Costs for the content saved 60% off expected rates without any loss in content quality.

My mission on Cheetos was to insert Chester Cheetah into the cultural conversation as a living mascot for mischief. I had launched his Twitter presence (which now has almost 130,000 organically built followers), partnered with a major motion picture (Despicable Me 2), and now I wanted to pull off a big Halloween prank. I helped the agency develop the world’s largest toilet papering crusade (virtually).

Using Google Maps and Street View APIs, our agency could digitally overlay virtual toilet paper on any address in the world with Street View, which included the interiors of many famous landmarks.

Overall, the short-term campaign in the two weeks leading up to Halloween drove more than 200 million impressions with an average engagement time of nine minutes per user, setting new records for the brand at that time. Based on the success of this prank, we created a follow-up prank for April Fools’ Day using a fake cologne that smelled like Cheetos.

After many years, the brand continued to leverage the spirit of virtual TP in new metaverse activations in the fall of 2022.