Today is 7/11, which is a pretty big day for one particular famous convenience store. 7-Eleven, which just under a year ago unveiled a whole branded merchandise line, is now filling it with a special line to celebrate not only its own day, but everyone who gets to celebrate a 7/11 birthday.
The line includes adult T-shirts with slogans like “I was born on 7-Eleven and all I got was this cool T-shirt,” which is a twist on the “lousy T-shirt” trope. Another says “If you’re reading this, there’s a 711% chance my birthday is on 7-Eleven.”
It’s kind of a fun way to incorporate 7-Eleven branding into cliche T-shirt designs, but the fact that it uses cliches that haven’t been popular for T-shirts for a little while now makes it fall a little flat. The shirts don’t have quite as much year-round use as they would if they were just 7-Eleven branding. Wearing this shirt any other month, or even any other day, of the year is confusing.
Now, the baby onesies that say “I’m a 7-Eleven baby” is fun if a baby was, in fact, born then. You get a little more mileage out of that one than you do as an adult.
There are some items that are made specifically for birthday parties, though, and this is really where 7-Eleven gets it right. There’s 7-Eleven wrapping paper, sets of three gift bags, 7-Eleven birthday candles (which only come with a 7 and two 1’s), and a 7-Eleven branded foil balloon.
These items are clearly what people are after the most, as the foil balloon and birthday candles are already sold out.
The T-shirts were a good try, and it’s cool that they brought apparel into the fold for this particular merchandise drop, but it doesn’t hit the highs of the retro-inspired releases that 7-Eleven previously put out.
At the same time, it’s not overtly connected to one particular event that 7-Eleven might have – just the idea of a 7/11 birthday. So, for apparel promotions, which should be designed for longevity and continued wear, try to use designs that are more evergreen than just one day of the year.
