Situation Overview

Yesway purchased a chain of gas station convenience stores and each location remained open for business during renovation and rebranding. The newly formed brand’s tagline, ‘Say Yes to Convenience,’ became a paradox as customers were inconvenienced by construction and product transitions.

Challenge

A common pain point for convenience store chains with an attached gas station is the customer tendency to fill their tanks and leave without making any in-store purchases. Yesway needed to overcome this challenge during a time when customers were already less likely to patronize its stores.

Process

Recognizing that profit margins are optimized and brand loyalty is achieved when customers make purchases inside the store, we developed a marketing strategy to complement the planned grand openings and increase foot traffic. We established relationships with local radio stations and negotiated opportunities for remote broadcasts at select Yesway grand opening events. The objective was to engage the public and build hype for the new brand in real-time as customer experiences during the events were shared on the radio. The ensuing campaign we developed to promote these events also highlighted key brand benefits to further drive buyer behavior and brand loyalty.

Execution

To create awareness for Yesway and promote the grand opening events, we developed a multichannel campaign that included broadcast radio and live-read radio scripts, outdoor advertising including billboards as well as on-site banners and signage on gas pumps; digital display with a custom landing page introducing the brand and highlighting grand opening specials, social media content and print collateral including postcards and free standing inserts.

Summary

For those locations featuring on-site remote radio broadcasting, Yesway experienced an uptick in sales. In addition, the digital display campaign generated 200K+ impressions for the custom landing page during the week of the grand opening events.

Spikes in web traffic on the event days suggest the offline media and on-site signage also drove customers to the Yesway website.