Sep 2, 2008 6:04 AM, PROMO Xtra, By Richard Tedesco

NBC Sports will kick off its Sunday Night Football season with a month-long media blitz in 7-Eleven stores during September to keep its core audience focused on the relatively new network TV football franchise.

The Big Match-Up Promotion, as it’s billed, will feature branded Big Gulp cups with full Sunday Night Football schedules and branded hot dog containers for that Super Big Bite at 7-Eleven. Banners bearing NBC Sports’ signature tagline, “Sunday night is football night,” will appear in the windows of the 6,000 7-Eleven stores around the country.

The signage will be co-branded with Pepsi, a key sponsor of NBC’s Sunday night football franchise, which is entering its third season.

“We wanted to be the first sports franchise to be in 7-Eleven because it’s the best way to reach that hard-to-reach male demographic,” said Mike McCarley, vice president of marketing, promotions and communications for NBC Universal Sports & Olympics. “It’s a great destination to reach those young men who are the avid core football fans.”

The target demographic is 18- to-34-year-old males that NBC see as the hardcore fans for those Sunday night games.

7-Eleven found that Sunday Night Football tested off its focus research charts in appeal among those young males, compared to movies it’s promoted to that same demographic crowd, according to McCarley.

7-Eleven came up with the Big Match-Up concept to tie to its Big Gulp and Super Big Bite. FreshWorks, an Omnicom unit, is executing the campaign.

NBC Sports is running a kind of misdirection promotional play with a Sunday Night Cookbook being marketed through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble outlets.

The cookbook, the result of a partnership with Time Warner Home Entertainment, features recipes from top chefs and players representing each NFL team, along with NBC’s announcing crew and singer Faith Hill.

With sales proceeds going to Taste of the NFL, which supports food banks around the country, the book is expected to be a big holiday season hit.

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