Contests attached to fast food packaging are a very common and very popular way to generate interest, conversions and repeat sales.
By far the most famous of these is McDonald’s Monopoly, a competition featuring stickers attached to various meal items that provide the potential to win free food, money off vouchers or part of a collection of stickers that when put together gives the winner a more substantial prize such as a car, holiday or cash prize.
This has taken various forms, with perhaps the most infamous being both their most popular and most costly sweepstakes game.
The “If U.S. Wins, You Win” promotion, which tied in to the 1984 Olympic Games, was a relatively straightforward contest compared to McDonald’s Monopoly. People who bought food from McDonald’s received a scratchcard with the name of an event on it.
If the United States Olympic Team won a medal, the card could be redeemed for a free menu item. A bronze medal won a Coca-Cola drink, a silver medal an order of french fries and a gold medal won a Big Mac.
As with most promotions, the cards were balanced to prioritise events that the United States did not typically win compared to rivals in the Soviet Union, such as gymnastics and table tennis.
However, a United States boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games led to a retaliatory boycott of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, meaning that in many cases the United States easily won gold medals practically unopposed.
They won 83 gold medals in total, four times more than the runner-up Romania for a total medal tally of 174 medals, by far the most a single nation won in the history of the Olympic Games.
This meant that a lot of people could turn a single meal order into repeated free Big Macs, particularly since these prize burgers also came with a scratch card. This led to the somewhat ignominious sight of McDonald’s running out of their flagship menu item.
The company lost millions in giving away free food, but at the same time got a lot of publicity that makes it both successful and a disaster.