Roll Up the Rim to Lose but Win Elsewhere?

It's that time of year again. Look up, look down, look all around and you'll be sure to find more discarded coffee cups than usual strewn upon our streets. I've had my gripes about the annual Tim Horton's "Roll Up the Rim to Win" contesting in the past, and every year I feel compelled to write about it for some reason or another. So here we are again.

While I did find the special camouflaged contest cups being sent to Afghanistan "in support of the troops" noteworthy (i.e. kind of ridiculous and embarrassing), it's actually a promotion that's being run concurrently by a competing coffee shop chain that takes the (coffee) cake this year.

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Toronto-based marketing agency Rennick Marketing Solutions, working with Country Style, has come up with a sly promotion in response to the annual Tim Horton's contest. In addition to running their own similar "Turn Up a Winner" contest, from March 3rd to 9th, Country Style will be redeeming *losing* Tim Horton's cup rims for free coffee.

Some might call it piggybacking or sniping, and most people will simply see it as a battle of the crappy coffee chains (queue the "who cares, it's crappy coffee" comments), but if it has any effect on the amount of litter on our city streets then I might have to call it a good idea.