Jack in the Box turned an ordinary cup into a golden ticket, and the instant win sweepstakes behind it gave fans a daily shot at cash and a run at a $75,000 grand prize. Buy the meal, find the code, enter it, and the screen tells you right then whether you won. Southern Made built the platform that powered all of it: 3 million unique codes, daily instant-win results, and a grand prize sweepstakes running underneath every single entry.
This was a seasonal promotion for a national fast-food chain that wanted to move a featured meal and turn buying it into a game. The hook was simple and the stakes were big. Every code was a chance to win something now and a ticket toward seventy-five grand later. Southern Made built and ran the platform that made the promotion work, kept it legal across the country, and protected every entrant’s information start to finish.
THE CHALLENGE
A national QSR brand had a fun idea and a hard set of requirements behind it. Codes had to live on millions of cups and validate the instant a customer typed one in. The promotion had to run a daily instant win and a grand prize sweepstakes at the same time, cap entries at three per person per day, and hold up when launch-day traffic spiked. It also had to satisfy sweepstakes law in every state where it ran, which meant a free way to enter, airtight rules, and a clean winner process. None of that can break in public, because a promotion at this scale gets watched by a lot of people at once.
WHAT WE BUILT
Southern Made built a custom microsite and the instant win sweepstakes engine running behind it. We generated 3 million unique single-use codes and stored them so the system could check any one of them in real time. A customer registered with name, email, and zip, entered a code from a purchase or pulled a free code through the alternate method of entry, and got an immediate win-or-try-again answer on screen. Winning entries fired an automated confirmation email on the spot. Every valid entry also dropped into the grand prize pool, so a daily player kept stacking chances at the $75,000 top prize.
We picked the right tools for the job and shipped a responsive site on a vanity URL, with the animations and hover states that made entering feel like part of the fun rather than filling out a form. We handled hosting, support, analytics, and the secure data export the client needed at the end. This is the kind of work we do at volume: Southern Made ships more than 450 projects a year and has built thousands of promotions, sweepstakes, contests, and instant wins.
HOW IT WORKS
The hard part was the math and the moment. Three million codes is a lot to generate, flag, and validate without slowing down the one thing the customer cares about, which is the answer to “did I win.” We architected the platform to absorb launch-day traffic spikes and to confirm a code, check it against the winning flags, and return a result without a lag. We also produced the master code file the client handed to their packaging printer, with the winning codes flagged, so the codes on the cups and the codes in the database matched perfectly.
COMPLIANCE & DATA SECURITY
A sweepstakes lives or dies on compliance, and this one carried the full load. Southern Made drafted the full and abbreviated official rules, built the free alternate method of entry so the promotion stayed legal without a purchase, and structured eligibility to keep registration and bonding off the table. We ran winner selection and outreach, prize fulfillment for both the cash prizes and the digital prizes, and customer service for entrants with questions. Because the platform captured entrant information, data security was not optional. Southern Made is SOC 2 Type 2 certified across all five trust principles, and we protected every name, email, and zip through capture, storage, and the final export to the client.
RESULTS & IMPACT
- A $75,000 grand prize, 75 first prizes of $1,000 each, and daily instant-win prizes, all running on one platform
- 3 million unique single-use codes generated, stored, and validated in real time
- Both a purchase entry path and a free alternate method of entry, capped at three entries per person per day
- Full official rules, winner selection and outreach, and prize fulfillment handled end to end
- Entrant data captured, stored, and exported under SOC 2 Type 2 controls
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