Coke is running a promotion now that says that if I unscrew the top of a bottle and find the right message printed on the inside of the cap, I win a prize.
My question is: How do they ensure fair, random placement of the winning cap(s)?
Here is my reasoning: Any large production operation (like Coke) keeps costs down by automating repetitive tasks such as filling the bottles, printing the labels, filling the cartons, loading the trucks, etc. Anyone who has ever watched an episod of Laverne and Shirley or gone on the tour of the Coke Bottling Plant knows this.
So, let’s say that, of the 1,000,000,000 caps they print this month, 3 are supposed to have a prize-winning message. Those caps must be specially printed. Then, someone must interrupt the usual, automatic flow of production to introduce these unusual caps into the mix.
This can’t happen without at least some employees knowing, at least, which plant has bottled the prize-winning bottle. And, I would bet that the right employee could find out which truck, or even which lot in which truck contained the right bottle(s).
I assume that is why these contests don’t allow anyone who works for the company (or their relatives) to participate.
But, let’s assume that I am that employee and I happen to know which truck contains the winning bottle. I can find out where that truck makes deliveries. I contact someone, a friend, like you, and tell you to go down to Jim’s Snak Shak™ and buy every case of coke in the joint. Hell, I even front the money for the purchase.
Then, once you open all those bottles and find the $1,000,000 cap, we split the money. Maybe 50-50, maybe some other way. The details aren’t important - what is important is that we could do it pretty easily, with little chance of getting caught.
So, I must be missing something. Anyone have any knowledge of how these contests are run?