Roll up the Rim, Tim Horton’s ingenious campaign that started a whopping 26 years ago, has been one of the most successful marketing success stories in history. Simply printing a Please Play Again or Win a Coffee or Donut has increased the coffee and fast food chain’s sales dramatically. It gives people the incentive to go to Tim Hortons because it’s “Roll Up Time”! You can win coffee, baked goods, gift cards, even Televisions and Automobiles! With all of these free giveaways, many people have wondered “do they actually make more money”?
Yes, in fact in previous years, their quarterly sales increase on average by 5%, a huge number for such a large company (http://thebucampus.ca/2011/03/roll-up-the-rim-to-win-%E2%80%93tim-hortons%E2%80%99-most-clever-marketing-ploy/.). Though they may lose some profits due to the fact that they are giving away a lot of product, the company’s sales increase offsets this dramatically. Take students for example. As Diou Cao had mentioned in her blog titled Kraft Dinner Target Market expansion, people are becoming more frugal and also want items on-the-go. https://blogs.ubc.ca/dioucao/2012/03/11/kraft-dinner-target-market-expansion/. What is Tim Horton’s main goal of this promotion? What are they trying to accomplish?
The Answer: Expand and grow their market. Students love their coffee, many students need it to do homework, to wake up in the morning, and just enjoy to have some coffee with friends. What does Roll up do? 20 minute lineups on campus locations, and also friends rolling up to see if they will win something.
The best part about it is the fact that it does not really matter if you lose, because you still get to enjoy the coffee/tea or hot chocolate that you purchased in the first place! An added bonus to this process is if you win you get to go through the lineup again to claim your prize (and most likely purchase more product at the same time!)
And this is not only the case at UBC, it is common at college campuses across the country http://thebucampus.ca/2011/03/roll-up-the-rim-to-win-%E2%80%93tim-hortons%E2%80%99-most-clever-marketing-ploy/.
So what is the future of Roll Up? Does it cause too much frustration? Too long of a lineup? Or does the increase in Sales and Profits offset this?As this season is slowly coming to an end, I am still waiting to see if I can win big next year!
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