Case Study · Thomy × Hashting
Thomy staged a
cyberattack on their
own mayo recipe.
Every FMCG brand
should be watching.
Gamified clues. Golden cap rewards. 750 CHF prizes. A community looking for the missing recipe. Here's what the architecture behind it reveals and seven lessons from ten years of cashback promotions.
Step 01 Scan golden cap
09:41
🏅 FIND & WIN 750 CHF
✓
Golden Cap detected!
FIND & WIN 750 CHF
Redirecting to form...
🔄
09:41
▲ ● ■
THOMY
Find & Win
FIND75 & WIN
750 CHF · 75 Jahre Thomy
750
CHF
CHF
Upload je gouden dop foto
+ aankoopbewijs om deel te nemen
+ aankoopbewijs om deel te nemen
📸
Gouden dop foto uploaden
Picture of Golden Cap
Voornaam *
Charlotte...
Naam *
Ford...
E-mail *
Referentie
XYZ-ref...
✓
Ik ga akkoord met de deelnamevoorwaarden en het privacybeleid van Nestlé.
09:42
#
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Today
Secure Meta Business messaging
THOMY75 Stuur gouden dop + ref XYZ naar Nestlé Suisse om te starten.
11:06 ✓✓
✅ Je win is gevalideerd.
Vul bankgegevens in voor uitbetaling 750 CHF →
Vul bankgegevens in voor uitbetaling 750 CHF →
11:32
Typ een bericht...
🎤
09:45
▲ ● ■
THOMY
# You have won
Je win is bevestigd 🏆
FIND & WIN
750 CHF
✅
"Your win has been validated"
Complete your bank details to receive 750 CHF
Bankgegevens invoeren
Vul je IBAN in voor uitbetaling van 750 CHF binnen 5–7 werkdagen.
IBAN *
CH93 0076 2011 6238 5...
Naam rekeninghouder *
Charlotte Ford
01 Scan golden cap
What happened
The campaign that made Switzerland
look for a stolen recipe.
To celebrate 75 years of Thomy mayonnaise, Charlotte Ford and the team announced that their secret recipe had been stolen in a cyberattack. They launched a platform where consumers could investigate the theft gamified clues, a dedicated community, and a golden cap reward mechanic that turned every Thomy buyer into a potential investigator.
The campaign has just started. But the architecture behind it already reveals something interesting about what separates a promotion that builds assets from one that just burns budget.
Lesson 01
High incentive = high fraud risk. Bulletproof the flow first.
When the reward is meaningful, the system has to be serious. Most brands do this backwards: creative first, redemption flow last. That's where campaigns leak. The bigger the prize, the more critical the validation architecture becomes.
Lesson 02
Product love doesn't drive participation.
Everyone likes mayonnaise. But nobody scans caps or shares data just because the mayo tastes good. Brand love creates attention. Incentives create action. The real skill is attracting the right shopper not just the most motivated one.
Lesson 03
A promotion without data is just entertainment.
The quest, the golden cap, the community all valuable. But if the system doesn't capture who participated, whether they purchased, and whether they returned, you built a show, not a system.
Engagement without measurement is a campaign. Engagement with measurement becomes a growth asset.
What this reveals
This campaign is just getting started.
But the structure already teaches.
After 10 years running cashback and contest promotions across FMCG, we kept seeing the same issues in category after category, market after market. Most of them are invisible until the campaign is already live.
10 years · 7 patterns
The mistakes we still see
across FMCG campaigns
every single season.
These aren't edge cases. They happen in every market, every vertical, every season. Spot them before launch not after.
01
Loyal buyers ≠ new buyers. You're subsidising loyalty and calling it acquisition.
High-frequency buyers know your mechanics. If your promo only rewards them, you're paying for behaviour you already had. Design for acquisition new shoppers, new baskets, new revenue.
02
Big prizes = big fraud. High incentives attract the wrong crowd protect your campaign like Thomy does.
A 750 CHF prize is a magnet. Not just for fans also for fraudsters with burner accounts and duplicate receipts. Validation isn't a compliance checkbox. It's the architecture that keeps your campaign clean. Thomy built it in from day one.
03
6 steps between scan and reward is 3 too many. You measure completions not drop-off.
Most brands only see the 3% who finished. The other 97% left somewhere in your funnel and nobody knows where. Every extra step is a leak you don't see.
04
Receipt data tells you everything basket, retailer, repeat rate. Most brands collect it. Almost none use it.
You're sitting on gold. Every uploaded receipt is a window into actual purchase behaviour. The brands that read it build smarter promotions next time.
05
A promotion without measurement is entertainment. Engagement without data is applause.
Community buzz without capture is a show. Participation numbers without purchase linkage are vanity metrics. You need the connection between attention and transaction.
06
Which retailer actually recruited new volume not just the most entries?
Total redemptions don't tell you where new buyers came from. Without a unified funnel, you're optimising your media budget on guesswork.
07
Every euro spent. Every product sold. Linked. That connection is the only proof that compounds.
Verified spend-to-sale is the only metric that gets smarter over time. It tells you who to target next, which mechanic to scale, and which retailer to cut. Without it, every campaign starts from zero. With it, every campaign builds on the last.
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