According to Wikipedia, motivation is a "psychological feature that arouses an organism to act towards a desired goal and elicits, controls, and sustains certain goal-directed behaviors." Arouses an organism to act, is something that all marketers know, live and breath. In fact, most products and brands have become so adept at knowing what calls us to action that many times we aren't even aware that we are being manipulated towards an end. When marketing is overt, we tend to smell it a mile away.
Different people are motivated by different things. Any good people leader will tell you that most people are motivated as much by monetary reward as they are by recognition. A very good leader will also tell you that this recognition can fall flat unless it is for a specific action or outcome. Nobody wants to win employee of the month because their name was randomly pulled from a hat.
Today, my name was randomly pulled from a hat as a way to increase my brand loyalty:
It wasn't because it was my 10th stay or because of my Hilton Honors points or anything like that. My name was just pulled randomly from a hat. As the clerk at the counter began to enthusiastically tell me about my complimentary bottle of water and "Guest of the Day" parking space, all I could think was "this sure is stupid, how is it that a huge company like this thinks that pulling my name from a hat will motivate me to stay here more often?"
Would it motivate you?
Absolutely not, especially since, as you stated, there was nothing more to it than dumb luck. Tomorrow there will be another guest of the day, and another the day after that, and for no good reason outside of trying to coerce people into coming more often. That said I do enjoy staying at Hampton Inn's. Another example of useless and random recognition would be the billion various honor "societies" and "communities" out there that try to recruit people in High School and College, and essentially take $70-$80 for no benefit to the student.
That whole honor society racket is a pretty good idea considering that they target people that have zero resume, high schoolers. One way to pad a resume is to add a bunch of meaningless societies.
It hasn't stopped since I've been in College. A lot of people I know (myself included), have been invited to join various "honor" societies, fraternities, and sororities, most of which are barely legitimate and only celebrate the fact that you are, in fact, in college. There's nothing motivational to it, and it seems to be random, hence the tie-in to your Hampton experience.
"The Society of Thoughtful Hubskiers," only $9.99 a month with a minimum commitment of 24 months. Complimentary Hubski sticker included. I think I just figured out how to pay our server costs :)