Doritos launched a $3-million Super Bowl commercial that was written and directed by the winners of its "Crash the Super Bowl" contest. TurboTax ran a similar, highly publicized contest in 2007. It's a trend that will continue to grow, and for good reason: its central concept is to leverage the power of consumer input.Starbucks has embraced this concept with "My Starbucks Idea," a message board that allows consumers to post ideas on how to improve the Starbucks experience. After all, who knows what it's like on the other side of the counter better than the customers do?Its message board offers advantages in several areas:- Resource: The users effectively become a large focus group that works for free.- Public relations: It's moderated by company representatives, so consumers feel their feedback is considered and valued.- Increased exposure: It builds interest in the company and its products.- Efficient: Its built-in voting system allows moderators to easily discern good ideas from bad ones.- Financial: Low startup and maintenance costs mean excellent ROI (Starbucks used a customized third-party message board platform).- Increased consumer participation: For the consumer, it's faster and more direct than sending letters to a corporate headquarters.There's a large focus group out there, waiting to help your company. Use it!
The Starbucks idea is brilliant. It is a chance for Howard Schultz to communicate to customers that the company has lost its way and wants to hear from their customers ways to help win them back into their hearts.
Many of the ideas were also great and fell into the category of help make it easy for us to spend our money with Starbucks.