Many brands miss the mark when they launch. They treat their launch as a big creative party, spending months debating color, font, and tone, and then dump it all on social media in one day, hoping people will care. Wasting time and money by doing this will not lead to success or market impact.
"Hope" is not a strategy.
Launching a brand is more than being simply pretty; it’s the ultimate test of how well you can manage projects. It’s a test of how well you can align all of your teams, manage your assets, and track the effectiveness of your brand across multiple channels.
If you do not have a firm operating model, you will only create a lot of noise. Without clearly defined ownership of the project, defined approval gates for your launch, and effective tracking methods, your brand launch will fail. Period.
To put it another way: You need to have a solid brand launch strategy. You will also require defined timelines, usually three to six months, along with phase gate requirements for your asset production and legal reviews.
This includes the separation of an internal launch for employees and your actual brand launch, and all the testing required along the way. In addition, you will have a basis for measuring the success of your brand with real numbers.
For example, Nielsen shows that if you are able to accurately track your brand lift campaigns, your ability to target the right audience has a potential of increasing your brand lift by an average of 7 times compared to average.
The larger brands measure every piece of media and influencer activity using sophisticated metrics like Media Impact Value. They do not just throw a launch on the internet and hope it has an impact.
Do Not Confuse Product Launches with Your Brand Launch Strategy
There is a lot of confusion among marketing teams when it comes to distinguishing between an introduction of new products, a push for more product purchases, and a simple update or refresh of the company’s branding.
When you do not specify what you will be doing on day one, you are ultimately going to optimize your efforts around the wrong metrics. If your employees are confused about what to focus on, then your target market will be confused as well.
Product Launch vs. Product Push
The purpose of a product launch is to introduce your company’s new software features; the goal is to acquire users as quickly as possible and turn them into customers immediately.
A product push or push marketing campaign focuses on how your company is positioned in the market, its share of voice, and how customers will remember or recognize your brand long-term.
If you create a new visual identity but all your messaging says “buy now!” you are essentially wasting money on the design of the new logo and the advertising campaign. Instead of trying to sell your products, focus on your core narrative and market position.
Once you build market trust, people will want to purchase your products without having to rely on push advertising. A brand refresh signals to the market consumers have already established awareness of your company.
The purpose of a full launch is to begin at ground zero or make a significant shift in direction. You must earn the right to be heard and taken seriously.
Earning that right will take considerable time and effort, including launching aggressive teaser campaigns, implementing an extensive amount of earned media, and building relationships to establish basic trust in your brand. You cannot rush or bypass any part of the full brand launch strategy process.
Making Your Brand Launch Strategy Work
The most important document you will ever prepare for your brand launch is not the creative brief, it is the operational plan.
With no definite guidelines set for the marketing team to follow, they will freak out when deadlines are approaching. Because of the disorganization, many assets will be lost and deadlines will be missed.
To stay in business with this amount of confusion, the creative side of a marketer's job must develop into a solid, highly developed way to manage and develop projects.
Define "Go" or "No-Go" Rules
Do not set a hard "live" date on a project if you have assets that are considered critical still in jeopardy. There must be checkpoints defined on your calendar to have an internal date to check off those before you put the project online or in the public domain.
For example, if there was no QA (quality assurance) of the website, or no legal department sign-off on the core messaging matrix, there will be a hold on launch until those items are resolved. By establishing this process before you get into development, you will prevent anyone feeling compelled to push broken pages into production.
Secure Your Messaging Matrix
Your messaging needs to be consistent across every vehicle you are using to communicate with the marketplace.
With a messaging matrix, it requires your team to take the main theme of your story and adapt it for every channel (PR, email, social media, and website) without straying from the subject.
For example, a founder of a company who speaks to the media has a different target audience; therefore, the bullet points would be completely different for an advertisement aimed at a mid-level manager. You should build this messaging matrix before writing any copy.
Get Your Internal Team on Board
Without internal support, your launch will fail fast. Always conduct internal rollout initiatives before discussing any external communication with the public.
Create a shared place for your organization to collaborate (like Confluence or an internal wiki site). Use the space to host town halls. Provide the sales and support teams with the new assets weeks before the launch date.
If your sales team is sending out sales decks (PowerPoint presentations) with the old branding on the launch day, you failed at this step.
Understand That Your Launch Is Not Just One Day
Most marketers do not consider their launch day; they plan entirely around launch day. The professionals are pacing themselves as they develop the launch schedule.
Depending on how large the company is, most professionals will create their schedule for six months before launching a new product. It is very difficult to go to market in an efficient manner unless you coordinate all necessary components within your brand launch strategy.
There is a clear process that can be followed when planning for the last few weeks before launching a product, and that is outlined here.
Phase 1: Deep Preparation and Setup (T-12 to T-8 weeks)
The first phase of preparation occurs between T-12 and T-8 weeks from launch. This is when you should conceptualize the customer personas. You will also conduct a deep SWOT analysis during this time.
Once the customer personas have been constructed and the SWOT analysis completed, you can then define the target demographic(s) and begin to create an overall channel strategy for the company.
During this phase, you will also get started on the PR activity. You will be reaching out to a select number of journalists and pitching them stories that will be available exclusively through embargo until the time of launch.
Phase 2: Asset Control and Legal Review (T-8 to T-4 weeks)
Phase 2 of the launch preparation process takes place between T-8 and T-4 weeks from launch. All visual assets require a high level of production during this phase of preparation.
During phase 2, all of the landing page designs will be produced and coded. These pages will be placed on a hidden staging server until the time of launch. All visual assets, including landing pages, are required to have a legal review to verify the integrity of every statement and trademark-related dependency.
You cannot afford to delay the legal review of the landing pages (or any other visual asset). Having a bold logo blocked from use three days before launch can be disastrous! Track every visual asset along with their legal reviews using a tool like Jira or other project management applications.
Phase 3: Pre-Launch Teaser Phase (T-4 to T-1 weeks)
You are now getting ready for the final phase of preparation, which is to drop some hints to your core customers. In order to identify what will create excitement, you should conduct some soft-launch campaigns to your existing email list to further test your new messaging.
Collaborate with other partners and influencers, who can provide your customers with an early preview of the brand. This will also allow you to begin identifying where the performance tracking links need to be tested.
Phase 4: Go Live Sequence
This is the final week leading up to the launch. When launching the product on the day of launch, do NOT press all buttons at the same time (i.e., at 9:00 a.m.). You will want to use a logical progression to execute each of your channels!
Send out the internal company memo first. Then, launch the main website to ensure it's responsive on mobile devices. Following that, send out the press release.
You'll want to promote the website via social media and advertisements after everything else has been completed. If your site goes down, all you have to do is pause your advertising. Post-launch feedback will be collected from days 1 to 4 after launch.
At this time, you need to analyze all raw data regarding search volume for your new company name as well as the number of times your story was mentioned by media outlets, and you'll need to analyze your post-launch scorecard for these results. Then, based upon how the market reacts, you can adjust your paid advertising budgets accordingly.
Tracking the Results of Your Brand Launch Strategy
The number of impressions your advertising receives is not an indicator of what will generate revenue for your business; it is considered a "vanity metric".
You must be able to determine if your company's new identity is affecting the awareness of your business, the response to your business, and the amount of direct traffic to your website. If you can't determine what type of return was generated from the advertising, you're just guessing.
Big global brands need robust tracking software to assist with tracking their launch results.
According to many case studies, major global brands will utilize tracking tools like Launchmetrics to access their Discover and Brand Insights modules when conducting global rollouts in over 60 different countries. These brands monitor MIV (Media Impact Value) to determine which public relations or influencer posts created the highest value of return on their investment.
This information is ultimately used to provide justification for future marketing budgets.
The Nielsen Tracking Framework
The Nielsen Tracking Framework is the industry standard for measuring marketing effectiveness. Nielsen uses three key factors: reach, resonance, and reaction, to assess how well a marketing initiative or campaign has performed in terms of market share.
Reach is the number of people that were exposed to the advertising campaign. Resonance is whether or not the advertising campaign was memorable and/or compelling enough to create a desire for the product or service.
Reaction represents the actions taken by those that viewed the campaign after being exposed to it. For example, those that saw the Starbucks Refreshers advertising campaign were more likely to visit the Starbucks website or sign up for a Starbucks account.
Using Nielsen's tracking system to measure the effectiveness of a marketing initiative has proven successful in providing marketers with hard evidence of brand awareness lift. In the case of the Starbucks Refreshers campaign, there was an 11.3% increase in brand awareness as a direct result of exposure to the campaign.
As a result of this, marketers are encouraged to use tools that can measure all three aspects of a marketing initiative as defined by Nielsen.
What to Do When Your Launch Goes Off Track
No matter how carefully planned out and organized an initiative might be, there is always the potential for something to go wrong in your brand launch strategy.
Delays in obtaining needed materials, falling behind schedule, a press release being completely ignored, etc., all can create a sense of urgency and disrupt planning efforts.
In order to be prepared for a situation where something goes wrong, having a failure mode plan in place is equally as important as having a defined timeline.
To prepare for a situation where an asset is delayed, a different version of the original asset should always be kept on standby and ready for immediate distribution to avoid halting other timelines due to one missing item.
Handling the Delay of Key Assets
If you have an important video asset that you were planning to distribute to your audience, but because of various circumstances, you were unable to obtain the video by the established deadline, you should not allow that one video to hold up your entire company timeline.
What you should do if a core video isn't ready to go is to create a backup graphic. You should create a simpler text-based graphic and use that as your immediate asset and wait until a week after the campaign began to release the core video.
By all means, keep moving forward and never allow one missing piece to ruin or negatively impact the entire project.
Correcting Dead Channels
Occasionally, when a marketing campaign goes live, there will be a dead channel that does not generate any interest.
For example, if you purchase paid ads and your paid ads do not generate any clicks, you should immediately stop paying for those ads. You should go back and review the advertising copy you created prior to launching the campaign, and you should test a more direct version of your ad copy with a new target audience.
It's important to remember, a rollout is not a one-time event; it is a process, and as such, the effectiveness of your advertising can be changed at any time. You are not locked into one configuration of your ad copy simply because you launched it.
The Bottom Line: Action is Better Than Creative Thinking
Even though a marketing campaign may have been created in the most imaginative and inventive way possible, if it is managed poorly, the effectiveness of that campaign will be severely hindered.
When introducing a new identity to the market, you will face a significant amount of challenges, and the level of effort required for successful execution will be tremendous. You must manage your project in a timely manner and use measurable metrics of impact, rather than relying on the number of likes you received on social media.
As previously described, treat your brand launch strategy as if it were a mathematical solution rather than a magical event. By using your project management skills, you will provide a springboard and support the initial efforts of your marketing initiatives and position your new product or service in the minds of your target audience for a longer period of time.