Roll Up The Rim a marketer’s dream

When Tim Hortons first launched its über-popular Roll Up The Rim To Win campaign in 1986, the biggest prize to be won was a box of Timbits. Fast-forward to 2012, and the top prize is a Toyota Camry Hybrid car.

Now in its 26^th year, the perennial campaign has become as iconic as the fast-food chain itself. It's a customer rewards program free of the burden of traditional loyalty programs (read: no annoying plastic cards pushed on customers) and, as Nicole Gallucci points out, it's ubiquitous.

"If you define success by ubiquity, this campaign has definitely achieved that. I can't imagine there's a consumer in this country that doesn't know what the Roll Up The Rim To Win program is," says the president and CEO of Toronto-based Boom Marketing.

"Everyone knows what Tim Horton's is and they have access to (a Tim's store). The awareness scores on this have got to be very high ... it's bizarre, the loyalty (consumers) have for this program."

Roll Up The Rim's origins

Created in 1986 as a "thank you" to Tim Hortons' guests at restaurants in Canada, the contest has grown into an annual event at more than 3,500 restaurants in Canada and the U.S. And since 1986, Tim Hortons has given away nearly 500 cars and countless coffees and donuts. In 2011, out of the high end prizes, 40 Toyota Matrix cars, 91 Panasonic 3D TVs, 890 Napoleon Gourmet Grill BBQs, and 4,019 Raleigh Mountain Bikes were won by Tim Hortons customers via the Roll Up campaign.

"With the help of Lilly Cup, Tim Hortons' cup supplier, our team brainstormed on how they could use the cup to reward guests. When they looked at the template of a blank cup, they noticed there was some white space on the rim of the cup," explains Michelle Robichaud, spokesperson for Tim Hortons Inc. in Oakville, Ont. "The manufacturer was asked if it was possible to print on that area and they said yes, but you could only see the printing when you rolled up the rim. And that's how it all began."

Interestingly, Robichaud says Tim's doesn't measure the success of the Roll Up campaign in sales.

"We give away tens of millions of prizes every year as our way of saying 'thank you' to our loyal coffee drinkers," she says. "For the price of their regular cup of coffee Tim Hortons' guests get to enjoy their favourite cup of coffee and have a chance to win a car or one of millions of other prizes. We truly love to see our guests win."

Canadian comparisons? Not many

There are few comparisons to make to Timmy's Roll Up campaign. Gallucci says there aren't many brands or companies in the world that run the same marketing campaign year-after-year.

"I'm sure many marketers will say that's a good or bad thing. But the truth is I actually think we throw the baby out with the bath water far too frequently and too easily," she says. "Part of their magic is Tim's has continued to maintain and own this which puts them ahead of other companies. The challenge is in ensuring they keep it spicy and alive."

Building customer loyalty

And thanks to the program, Gallucci suggests Tim Hortons' grip on consumer awareness can't be broken.

"Tim's can go with this type of program due to its humbleness and its accessibility to every Canadian and that's a huge advantage it has over its competitors," she says. "Every marketer looks at Roll Up The Rim to win and all of us try to figure out where the sweet spot is.

"This is a game for the consumer. There's a degree of frivolity and light-heartedness to it which I think all marketers try to add (to their respective brands)."

And there's something to be said for continuity, she adds. There's not a lot of products out there maintaining the same look and feel over an extended period of time and that's a key advantage for Tim's and its' messaging.

"If you can do that in a contest and insert a bit of adrenalin into your marketing efforts, that actually speaks volumes in ways none of us realize," she says. "I don't think we put enough value on that as marketers."