Can You Summon
100 Friends? S2

“Can You Summon 100 Friends?” is a Prime Video Original variety show: players phone the people they think of as friends and ask them to come, and whether those friends turn up is the answer the title asks. Seven-Eleven sponsored Season 2 — the first Prime Video Japan sponsorship built on a variety show — with a brief that ruled out anything resembling an infomercial.

The show itself couldn’t be touched. It was already shot, the cast were well-known names, and the product wasn’t locked until late. So the campaign borrowed the show’s own device. Its hook is the Friend Entrance: the few seconds after the door opens, before anyone knows who is walking in. In the ads, the next friend through that door is a Seven-Eleven strawberry dessert, introduced on the same name cards the show uses for its guests.

That door and frame then ran wherever the audience was — a 30-second custom video and a custom bumper on Prime Video, a Fire TV rotator into a dedicated landing page, and, rebuilt for three-panel monitors, the in-store screens of 3,700 Seven-Eleven stores nationwide.