Shaking off the old and putting on the new - Slurpee gets a Makeover

7-Eleven is doing a re-design on its Slurpee. The beverage now has bright and bold colors and a whole new vibe. It is a part of a summer advertising campaign “Anything Flows,” that is full of colors of the fizzy frozen beverage. The campaign is orchestrated by Dentsu, and is designed to appeal to a new generation of Slurpee drinkers and to introduce the Slurpee to Speedway convenience stores, which 7-Eleven acquired in 2021. 7-Eleven operates or franchises more than 13,000 U.S. convenience stores.

7-Eleven described this new look for the Slurpee as “full of eccentric colors and eclectic vibes.” This was inspired by “the Brainfreeze Collective,” an online discussion group of 250,000 7-Eleven enthusiasts who share ideas and opinions about experiences at 7-Eleven, Speedway and Stripes stores.

Apart from this, 7-Eleven will sell a Slurpee-inspired custom capsule collection via its 7Collection e-commerce shop. Slurpee fans can buy things like bucket hats, Slurpee-drink-shaped pool float and Anything Flows tees at 7Collection.com.

All the TV Spots for “Anything Flows” begin with the Slurpee drink dollop and then go on to feature a whole bunch of different characters – a man in blue with a blue raspberry Slurpee, four seniors in matching red jackets with cherry red Slurpees, a man in a yellow suit, barefoot and sipping a piña colada Slurpee in an office building, to name a few. All of them were directed by Adrian De Sa Garces, and will run across broadcast TV, connected TV, radio, streaming audio, display, social and search platforms between June 12 and Aug. 29.

The Slurpee came to 7-Eleven in 1966 and changed its look last in 2019. The new cup has a large “S” that looks like the dollop at the top of the frozen beverage.

Giving an age-old favorite a new look is a great thing for brands to do. It gives a certain kind of freshness to the brand that will still retain connections to the past as well as serve as a way of attracting the younger newer audiences.

While some feel that a time-tested look and feel need not be changed and that any change will spoil connections to the past, it is not true at all. While retaining a nostalgic connect to wonderful times, gone by, re-designing the way a product looks can bring a lot of benefits to it.

And 7-Eleven has done a lot of re-branding and re-design over the years. This is not anything new for the brand. Giving a much-loved and well-known product a new look, is a great way to connect with a younger and newer audience. And in many ways, to remain competitive, brands need to indulge in this exercise every now and then.

It is a great way to bring a modern, more contemporary feel to a product that has been around for a while - so a newer younger audience can connect with it and develop attachments to it, like the previous generations. If your business has been around for a long time, the colors and the design might look outdated – it is especially then, that a brand needs to do a little modernizing.

For a brand to stay relevant, find new customers, embrace a wider and more diverse audience, and most importantly, beat the competition and stay ahead, it is food to re-design and re-brand.

The day a brand finds that its branding does not suit or fit its culture, or the market that it is trying to capture, it is time to shake off the old and put on the new.

Businesses must adapt to the changing and evolving times. Or they will get left behind.

One must add that the timing of re-designing the look of Slurpee couldn’t be better – now that the Slurpee is being introduced to Slurpee 7-Eleven’s Speedway convenience stores, what better way to do it, than with a new look and feel?