The point of sale is a powerful place; it’s the point in time at which all the elements of the sale—the consumer, the money, and the product—come together.

Increasingly, there’s an additional factor to consider when thinking about this crucial moment: the mobile phone. 90% of consumers use phones when shopping at brick and mortar retail stores like 7-Eleven. In today’s day and age, consumers aren’t paying attention to floor vinyls or overhead mobiles advertising products—they’re looking at their phones.

Leveraging the Belly iPads that sit at the checkout counter, we were able to use their Bluetooth capabilities to detect nearby smartphones with the Belly app and send them a push notification; a functionality known as beacons. Through the deployment of our idea, Belly transformed from one of many loyalty rewards programs to the largest beacon network in the country.

We were able to send 7-Eleven customers messages about Gatorade when they were in or walking by the store, right when they were staring down the beverage case facing a tough choice.

For eight weeks, we used the Belly tablets to message customers on their phones about Gatorade at the point of sale. These messages appeared on cell phones in an obvious way: appearing even on the lock screen of a closed phone or at the top of a phone screen, momentarily taking over the app that’s currently in-use.

The program succeeded by all measures: boosting sales and awareness of not only Gatorade’s Summit Storm flavor, but raising sales of Gatorade overall within Belly-participating 7-Elevens.

As measured by a pre and post campaign survey of 7-Eleven shoppers in stores with Belly tablets, sales of Summit Storm more than doubled across the campaign period versus the month before. Our tactic broke through people’s phone screens and stood out in the noisy environment of a convenience store, lifting sales across all flavors, even those not explicitly mentioned in our push notification.

Through the employment of innovative and new technology, we were able to successfully remind customers that Gatorade is always the go-to choice for athletes.