Product feedback FAIL

I got the following spammy email today. All bold emphasis is in the original, and all names have been redacted.

Subject: company name redacted invites you to contep-test [sic] new company name redacted products

Dear niel,

The uncanny ability of company name redacted traders to predict the future is legendary ;-) That's why the folks at the company name redacted company, creators of the world-famous product name redacted, are eager for your feedback on some of their new product concepts.

company name redacted is offering $2,400 to be shared by those of you who will offer the most insightful feedback on 15 of its new product ideas. Only 200 of you will be selected to participate, so your chance of sharing the prize is pretty good! By participating, you will also have an exclusive preview of some new food products that might soon be on America's shelves, and which you'll have helped refine and optimize with your feedback!

The innovative collaboration platform we've developed for this purpose allows you to comment and rate product ideas, and also rate each other's feedback! The exercise is divided into four phases over 2 weeks starting next monday July 27th, but each stage offers its own set of prizes and is designed to require just a few minutes of your precious time: Commenting on the product concepts, rating the best ones, rating other people's feedback, and taking a short survey.

If you are interested in participating to this cutting-edge research effort on concepts for a share of the $2,400 reward, please register now at URL redacted. It will be fun!

Best regards,

company name redacted Team

Let me enumerate the FAILs.

1. The subject line contains a typo. What is a "contept-test"? My phish-filter tingled immediately.
   
2. A smiley in a commercial solicitation? Another phish indicator. If you want to be taken seriously, be serious.
   
3. Ooh, $2400, an arbitrary monetary payout! Oh wait, that amount is to be shared. Among the 200 of us who share the most insightful feedback. So that means 200 arbitrarily selected participants will each get $12. Hooray, I can finally get my mom that operation. Hey, giant corporation, you're offering only $12 for valuable insight? You're off by an order of magnitude.
   

The URL seems valid, though I did not click on it. The organization running the survey is a real organization, though not one that has previously done commercial product research as far as I know. The organization on whose behalf they are performing this research is also a real food manufacturer.

Forgive me if I don't participate.

UPDATE:

I had an email conversation with the CEO of the organization running this survey, and I'd like to make a few additional points.

First, I did not mean to imply that this message was a spam or phish, only that its content made my spidey-sense tingle in ways that spam and phish usually does. I am a registered member (although non-active) of the organization, but I do not recall having previously received any emails of this type from them.

Second, it seems I misinterpreted some of the terms. The $2400 is not to be divided 200 ways; rather, only 200 people will be selected to participate, and the reward will be divided among the top entries. So while the actual payout per winner is indeed higher than $12, I believe that statistically the expected payout is still $12 per person.

Finally, speaking as a product manager, I would never offer this kind of payout for product feedback. It's been a while since I reviewed the literature on this, but I believe that you would get better feedback either by offering no cash, or by offering a donation to the participant's preferred charity. Psychologically, by offering a cash reward you change the feedback profile, and you actually would get a lower participation rate.