What happened to scratch and win?

Online marketing should stay online. Offline should stay offline. I understand everything from a marketing perspective, but I’m speaking from a consumer perspective here. I’ll just tell the story:

I went to a burger joint today and got a tasty double cheeseburger meal, complete with fries and a drink. It had some nonsensical scratch and win contest thing on the fries, so i checked it out to see if i could get score some free food. That’s how it’s supposed to work, or… that’s how it used to work.

I peeled off the sticker, found a coin and scratched away to see if I won’t have to pay for lunch tomorrow. Then I am presented with some long random code like ‘Ag39ksCKfWdKGSx029×02-8ddwkduw’ and a website? Apparently, I am to go to a website and type this code in to see if I win. Kind of a pain, but I want my free burger, so I give it a shot.

I go to the website and enter my code, then I am presented with a form to fill out and I must enter my email address, once I fill it out, they will email me to tell me if I have won a free burger. So I sign up for their online spam thing (I deserve my free burger now!) and 10 minutes later they email me telling me that I lose, no burger. But luckily, I am signed up for their newsletter! I can opt-out of course, but that takes time to login to their site and fill out a survey why I was dissatisfied with their newsletter and/or burgers.

I can’t imagine what I would have to do if I actually won the free burger. I imagine printing out a form that says ‘You won a free burger! Present this at Burger Joint to claim your prize.’ is out of the question.

Whats next, scratch and maybe win lottery tickets? Find out if the ticket you purchased is a winner by scratching the stuff, getting a code to enter online, registering your email address and signing up for our lottery newsletter?

I already bought the product in the real world, offline. Marketing isn’t necessary.

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