How I Would Take On Tim Hortons
Posted: March 17th, 2009 | Author: Christian | Filed under: Idea Drunk's Ideas | Tags: christian parsons, coffee, coffee time, idea drunk, Ideas, marketing, roll up the rim, tim hortons | 4 Comments »
It’s spring again. In Canada, that means two things: (1) there is at least one more snowfall to occur before it actually gets warms, and (2) it’s Roll Up The Rim time at Tim Hortons. Roll Up The Rim is the biggest marketing promotion in Canada. It’s so popular that companies pay to have their prizes featured in the contest. Think about that. The reach is so immense that they basically sell ad space on their coffee cups. Oh, and the ads suck. But it doesn’t matter because Canadians love this contest regardless.
One of my friends challenged me to figure out what you could to “take on” Tim Hortons. This is my answer.
You have to realize that you can’t beat them by being just 10% better. (Like what Coffee Time is doing with “Every Cup Is A Winner”). Having a larger prize pool doesn’t matter at this point. Besides, Tim Hortons is the largest coffee chain in Canada. That means, that they have deeper pockets. They could simply grow the size of their prize pool to trump yours.
So what do you do? You have to pull back and see the big picture. You have to see the opportunities to change the game. You need to get outside of trying to beat Tim Hortons on the grounds of a contest promotion. That’s their game. They own it in Canada. You need to strike out and attack their audience from a different angle. Offer them a different value proposition.
Tim Hortons targets the coffee drinkers who take their coffee “to go”. So what do you do? You make their take-out coffee experience better. How do we do that? Simple. You give them free cups. But the cups need to be cool. They need to have badge value. They need to be reusalbe and unique enough so that people can tell it’s a XXX coffee cup. It’s kind of like what POM did for its POM Teas with their glasses.
You provide people with something free and something with cool badge value. Simple. No rolling up the rims of coffee cup. No trying to calculate the winning odds in different provinces. Just a cool bonus from a cool coffee shop.
- Christian
Save the earth and run a cool promo. Bravo.
I don’t know if anyone could actually take on Tim Hortons. I mean, they’re such an institution all across Canada, it’s hard to go up against that size and loyalty.
@ chowner
Thanks!
@ andy
I think you have to look at it from their size being a disadvantage. The fact that they are so large means that they sell WAY more coffee. It means that if they did the coffee cup thing, than it wouldn’t be as unique because everyone would have one. Besides, Tim Hortons isn’t premium to produce stuff with badge value.
You can use the fact that they are a large and lumbering organization against them by being nimble and quick to react. Quick to get marketing campaigns in market. Quick to respond to consumers. All because you don’t have the same massive organizational hierarchy that Tim Hortons does.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.