At SCA Promotions, our customers frequently hear us say, “As the size of your prize increases, so will your participation.” It’s human nature to give greater effort or take a greater risk in order to reap a bigger reward. And, that’s why we encourage all of our customers to make potential customers say, “Wow!” when they offer a prize.
Unfortunately, there’s a darker side to human nature that we must consider when we’re designing a contest. As the size of a prize increases … so does the incentive to cheat. “Cheaters never prosper” is a great mantra to teach children, but unless they’re caught or stymied, sometimes they do in real life. And, in the world of games and promotions, cheaters can come from the inside as well as the outside.
One famous inside contest cheating scheme happened between 1996 and 2001 and involved McDonald’s Monopoly and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? games. The games were run by Simon Marketing, and their chief security employee, an ex-cop, was stealing and selling game pieces worth up to $1 million. In all, $13 million worth of prizes were stolen, the FBI arrested 8 people, and shortly thereafter Simon Marketing went out of business because of the incidents.
That is a graphic example of why SCA saw the need to develop TrueDraw™, our proprietary software engine that generates secure, random and auditable outcomes for winner determination drawings. TrueDraw protects our clients from any doubt whatsoever regarding the integrity and randomness of a winner selection process. And, because humans always add an element of risk – even vetted security personnel – we’ve dramatically reduced the potential for human intervention.
TrueDraw’s software program uses an algorithm to randomly generate a subset of winning numbers from the total population of entry numbers. The resulting subset of winning numbers are generated by using a truly random “seed” number, which is generated from either an NIST standard compliant hardware source or from one or more verifiable public events. Both of these processes create as close to the desired “Zero Trust” environment as is economically viable. The source of outcomes generated by SCA can be proven to an extremely high degree of confidence – and most importantly, the results are auditable.
TrueDraw can be used with any promotion that requires the selection of entries, finalists, and/or prize winners to be secure, random and auditable. Clients can use it for any promotion whether or not it includes prizes covered by SCA.
The consequences of running an insecure promotion are potentially very high, including the loss of large amounts of money, going out of business, and/or legal and regulatory repercussions – and, of course, serious public relations and reputation scars. The benefits of TrueDraw mitigate those risks:
• Secure: Digital fingerprinting and file notarization are used to secure the entry file from tampering.
• Repeatable: Selection process can be repeated and demonstrated after the fact.
• Auditable: Permanent audit trail established demonstrating integrity of the process.
• Adaptable: Winners/entries can be drawn by classes, numbers, or levels.
• Easy: SCA provides winner/entry lists in a complete file, ready for prize fulfillment and processing.
• Fast: Drawings can be completed the same day entry files are received.
We designed TrueDraw to be secure, simple, and affordable because our clients come to us for turnkey solutions that remove risk. You can be confident in the outcome of your promotion, and the results speak for themselves with TrueDraw. Give us a call at 888-860-3700 or contact us through the form on this page for more information.