I would say, everyone who’s living in Canada would have seen this red cup with yellow arrow pointing top. After finishing warm and delightful coffee, people get to roll up the part where arrow is pointing to see if they have any luck to have another cup of coffee or even a better prize than that. Every coffee drinker in Canada would recognize the ‘red’ as a symbol of Tim Horton’s coffee shop. To certain extend, Tim Hortons is one of the best cafe in its competition in Canada along with Starbucks.

It is viable that Tim Hortons is one of the top in the competition for the reason being its brilliant marketing strategies. Today, I am willing to share some of the marketing ideas that Tim Hortons had that made them famous than ever.

One of their strategy is to approach customers with very local mindset. Every time I visit Tim Hortons, I see the pictures of children playing soccer, group of young adults playing football. Also, as soon as I walk in to the store, I see older people sitting down with French Vanilla talking on and on and on, unlike cafe that consists of fast-paced business workers and students studying for few hours with a cup of coffee. These local, yet friendly strategy is creating certain peaceful nostalgic atmosphere that attracts customers.

“Every child deserves a brighter future.” Tim Hortons is having a campaign to help children to have a better food with proper nutrition. That cookie is sold at a price of $1.00 + tax and all of the revenue that comes from this cookie is donated to ‘Food and Friends’ student nutrition program to help the minorities who are having a hard time eating the right food. This is a great campaign that Tim Hortons did which increased its values as well as the positiveness of the brand. Nonetheless, customers may come to have a cup of coffee then to buy a cookie rather than they coming in to donate $1.00. This campaign/marketing strategy gives a better understanding of a brand but, this work doesn’t necessarily bring more customers into the store.

What really attracts customers the most is the presence of buy a coffee and get another coffee strategy.  This ‘Roll up the rim to win’ was first started in 1986. Even though the first prize was a pack of Timbits, it was a great asset to Tim Hortons in a long run. As this specific red cup with yellow arrow comes out to the market, the lineup to counter gets longer. This strategy was well announced targeting the consumer behaviour. The expectation/hope as they roll up the rim as well as the satisfaction as they actually win a prize is the great extrinsic motivator that sweep customers into stores. Also, the number of prize recipients that’s posted up right above the counter increases every consumers’ desire to receive a prize.

These marketing strategies that Tim Horton performs is greatly affecting the revenue of Tim Hortons and its brand-awareness!