Friday, June 20, 2014

Funded With Kickstarter

I have seen some products with the "Funded with Kickstarter" logo on them and do not believe that using it grants benefits commensurate with the disadvantages of using it. There are a significant number of retailers that view the use of Kickstarter to fund a product, rightly or wrongly, as taking away sales of that product from the retailer. Ergo, those retailers look askance at any Kickstarter funded product. Putting "Funded with Kickstarter" on the product certainly encourages those retailers not to stock it.

In addition, customers really don't care how you got the funding. They want the product and are not particularly interested in how you made it, ergo, it doesn't matter to them if funding for it came from Kickstarter or from a family loan. The only benefit putting the logo on the package might come if customers view Kickstarter as a reliable vetting service, indicating that products funded through Kickstarter have undergone some scrutiny, similar to "As Seen on TV" blurbs seen on many packages. Buyers believe that, in order to get on TV, a product must undergo some sort of examination, so the "TV" blurb lends some credibility to the product.

Games would probably do better to pursue an "As seen on TableTop" logo, as that lends some creditably to the product, at least within the gaming industry, since many of their customers have some familiarity with TableTop.

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