Cashing in on crowdsourcing

Consumers are increasingly becoming sick and cynical of the age-old ad game of ‘push, push, push’. Today’s consumer, or consommacteur, doesn’t want to be a demographic or a subject of research and testing. Today’s consumer wants to be an active participant, a resource that generates and contributes ideas. Welcome prosumerism. 

This willingness to participate and connect has enabled more brands to succeed from crowdsourcing – reaching out to consumers and inviting them to collectively design, develop and sometimes produce products and services. We know this model well and have seen its success for companies like Craigslist and Wikipedia.  With crowdsourcing came newly engaged and empowered consumers, incentivized by the opportunity to take part. 

In comes Kluster. Its premise is to incentivize participants to help solve a given need (a new product, a new marketing campaign, etc.) in a market-like environment that has real cash rewards. What sets it apart from similar companies, such as Innocentive, Ideablob, and Crowdspirit, is that participants don’t have to create the winning solution to cash in. The cash prize is distributed to everyone who supported the idea, based on how much they contributed to it, how early they got behind it, and what percentage of their given points they invested in it.

You might stop and ask: will customer-driven really lead to greater levels of customer satisfaction? I suppose it really all depends on the class of talent that platforms like Kluster can engage. From my perspective, the real truth of the matter is that consumers have been given the opportunity to shape the way in which they consume – and there’s no turning back.

25 February 2008, posted by Eliza Blank