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MANILA, Philippines – Senatorial candidates should take a big gulp — convenience store chain 7-Eleven shoppers have decided that administration-led Team PNoy will win and Ramon “Jun” Magsaysay Jr. will hands down be the top choice.
According to 7-Eleven’s 7-Election poll, which allowed shoppers to “vote” by choosing among Big Gulp fountain soda cups, Team PNoy edged out United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) in this “unscientific” poll that has “closely mirrored” the actual election results in the Philippines, the United States, and about 14 other countries.
From March 20 to May 6, 2013, the retailer harvested sales data of the Gulp cups per design or barcode — yellow cups for Team PNoy, orange for United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), and white for independent candidates and all other political parties in it stores nationwide.
For the white cup buyers of the 16 oz. Gulp beverage — Coke, Pepsi or Del Monte products — the barcode for the party of the customer’s choice was scanned to accurately reflect the vote.
After close to a million “votes” were cast, the 7-Election poll tally was this:
“Votes” for individual candidates were made online via www.7-election.com.ph. No purchase was required to vote online, but users could only vote once.
This showed that Jamby Madrigal of Team PNoy and Tingting Cojuanco of UNA, who accounted for only 0.9%, would have the least votes among their teammates.
Independent candidate Mon Montano, who accounted for 0.8% of the votes cast, had the least amount of votes in the 7-Election campaign.
Second time
Philippine Seven Corp, the local franchise holder of 7-Eleven, hopes to duplicate its success during the 2010 presidential elections, when its 7-Election promo and survey showed a win for then presidential candidate Benigno Aquino III.
“It actually predicted the winner in 2010. [President Benigno Aquino III] won in Comelec (poll body Commission on Elections) with 41% of the votes, while in 7-Elections, he won 38%. There’s a 3-point difference, it’s very, very small,” Achilles A. Martinez, the Senior Category Manager of Philippine Seven Corp, told Rappler.
As the world’s largest retailer by number of stores, 7-Eleven has been riding on the election fever in different countries by pushing for products that allow consumers to join the count-the-cups poll. 7-Election in the United States allowed coffee drinkers to pick a blue cup for the Democratic Party’s candidate and red one for the Republican’s bet.
The “winners” in the 7-Election results mirrored the actual election outcome 4-in-a-row from 2000 to 2012. In 2012, Obama cups dominated the sale of the estimated 6 million 7-Election cups.
Marketing promo
Promoting voter awareness is a key advocacy of this marketing campaign, which Martinez said, has proved to be a very popular promo for the convenience store chain.
“Aside from that (voter awareness), we want to highlight our drink, which is Gulp, as a value-for-money (product),” Martinez said.
Martinez said that the promo was also a successful way to increase their Gulp sales by at least 10%. He also stressed that no proceeds of the promo were donated to any political party.
Th 7-Election promo is an “unscientific and unofficial survey supported solely by the company, done in the spirit of fun.”
More stores are involved in this year’s promo than when Philippine Seven first introduced it in 2010.
In 2010, the campaign only involved 400 to 500 stores garnering a little over a million votes. This 2013, Martinez said that around 850 stores participated but data showed that less than a million votes were cast.
“This is a very informal survey and we don’t want to say that it’s representative. It’s just a fun way of asking our customers who they want to vote for,” Martinez said.
The company also said that the survey was done “without additional questions and restrictions as to the age of the voter and frequency of votes, and hence may not be considered to reflect any sentiments regarding any official survey or any upcoming elections.” – Rappler.com
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