A cultural institution — and a campaign that couldn't fail.
Roll Up to Win is one of Canada's most recognizable annual events. Every spring, Tim Hortons distributes cups printed with prize codes — customers roll the rim to reveal what they've won, ranging from a free coffee to a car. It accounts for a significant portion of Tim Hortons' annual revenue, and it's the kind of campaign where the entire country participates. Literally everyone plays.
In 2020, COVID changed everything. QSR lobbies were closed. Physical cup distribution was at risk. The contest that drives a meaningful share of annual revenue was in jeopardy — and canceling it wasn't an option.
"Matt Moore, then VP of Digital at Tim Hortons, came to us with a seemingly impossible ask: take the entire contest digital — including the tactile experience of rolling a cup rim — and do it in 9 weeks."
This wasn't just a digital marketing campaign. It was a full gaming platform build — virtual cup mechanics, prize logic, age gating, social sharing, and connection to a prize fulfillment vendor. All of it, from scratch, under an immovable deadline.
Not a simple app update —
a platform build with no margin for error.
The scope was enormous for the timeline. This wasn't adding a feature to an existing app — it required standing up an entirely new gaming infrastructure, woven into the Tim Hortons digital experience, that had to work flawlessly at national scale on launch day.
The Tim Hortons digital team handed off an exhaustive requirements list. The challenge wasn't just building it — it was making smart scope decisions fast so the team could focus on the experience that actually mattered to guests.
Agile, lean, and iterative —
a masterclass in shipping under pressure.
My platform team partnered directly with the Tim Hortons digital team. The first decision was the most important one: ruthlessly cut scope to protect the core experience. We identified what was essential to the magic — the roll, the reveal, the delight — and deprioritized anything that didn't directly serve it.
We sent our lead PM, Jamie Katz, and a team of developers on-site to Toronto. Proximity to the Tim Hortons team wasn't optional — it was the strategy. Decisions that would take days over Slack got resolved in hours in the same room.
"The team used every trick they could to mock the experience so we could provide meaningful feedback early. It was a masterclass in taking a POC all the way through to a polished product."
Development was iterative from day one — getting the game into testable form quickly, gathering feedback, and improving. No big reveals at the end. Constant progress, constant visibility. The team built, tested, and refined in parallel rather than in sequence.
The result was a platform built not just for one launch — but for reuse. The architecture was designed so the contest could be re-themed, updated, and redeployed with minimal effort. That decision paid off immediately.
The biggest Roll Up to Win
in Canadian history.
The numbers weren't just good — they were record-breaking. Tim Hortons didn't just survive the pivot to digital. They used it to blow past every goal they'd set for the contest and set a new benchmark for what a digitally-native version of the campaign could achieve.
The platform's reusable architecture proved its value immediately — the second run of the contest was activated in under 8 weeks. We didn't just build a campaign. We built infrastructure that Tim Hortons could operate as a recurring business asset.