Brickfish is giving marketers the chance to promote their products early on in their life cycle, in some cases before those products are created, by letting their customers do it for them.

CEO Brian Dunn used a recent campaign the startup did for leather and accessory maker Coach as an example of how it can serve corporate clients.

Coach ran a contest that asked users to design a new tote bag. More than 3,500 users submitted designs, and by the end of the promotion, 6 million consumers had either commented on, shared, or voted on the designs.

Brickfish lets brands harness the power of online marketing by soft-launching marketing campaigns via the blogosphere and then allowing users to spread the electronic word using email or their social networks.

By the time interested users check it out, a buzz is already building.

"We believe we're starting a conversation with the brand" for consumers, says Dunn, the former VP of strategy and dealmaking at Macrovision.

Another campaign for a Sephora compact gave the winning designer a chance to explain her creative process in a video and a visit to the company's headquarters.

For Brickfish branded campaigns, consumers come back an average of six times and engage with the marketing content for more than 10 minutes, according to Dunn.

That level of engagement is why he believes Brickfish will be able to lure advertising dollars that are now spent on TV commercials and is, in fact, now earning revenue with campaigns that "are in the tens of thousands of dollars," Dunn says.

"We get paid for user engagement."