How far in advance should a product launch be planned?

Long enough to complete the internal phase properly — training the network, getting stock into position, preparing the sales story. That is usually the constraint, not the event production. A launch date set by marketing without checking distribution readiness is the most common planning error.

Should a launch target dealers or customers?

Both, but rarely in the same room. Dealers want commercial specifics — margin, positioning, support. Customers and press want the idea. Combining them means the dealer session is diluted for an audience that does not care, and the public session is cluttered with detail that means nothing to them.

How do we measure whether a launch worked?

Not by attendance or coverage alone. The measurable questions are whether the network could sell it immediately, whether enquiries in the following weeks converted, and whether stock moved in the launch region compared to a comparable one. See proving an activation worked for the same discipline applied more generally.

What proportion of budget should go to the event itself?

There is no universal ratio, but if the launch evening consumes nearly all of it, the plan is almost certainly missing phase three. Reserve meaningful budget for the weeks after — that is when the interest the event created either becomes sales or disappears.

Events

A launch is not one day. It is three.

The launch day gets the budget, the photographs and the nerves. The two phases on either side of it decide whether the product actually arrives in the market.

31 August 20266 min read

The day is the smallest part

Ask what the launch plan is and you will usually be shown a run-of-show for one evening. Venue, stage, film, unveil, dinner.

That evening matters. It is also the least difficult part, and it is not where launches fail.

A product launch is three distinct phases with three different audiences and three different definitions of success. Planning only the middle one is how a brand ends up with a spectacular evening and a product nobody in the market is ready to sell.

Phase one: before anybody outside knows

The audience here is your own distribution — dealers, retailers, the sales team.

By launch day, they need to know what the product is, what it replaces, what margin it carries, and what they say when a customer asks how it compares to the thing next to it. If they learn it at the same time as the public, the first weeks of demand hit a network that cannot answer basic questions.

What success looks like: the network can sell it on the morning after, without calling head office.

This phase is often skipped because it is invisible and has no photographs. It is also the one that most reliably damages a launch when missed.

Phase two: the launch itself

Now the audience is external — press, customers, partners, the market.

The job is not to explain the product. It is to make one thing memorable about it. A launch that tries to communicate every specification produces an audience that remembers none of them.

What success looks like: somebody who was there can tell somebody who wasn't what the product is, in one sentence, a week later.

This is also where the format question matters — a launch aimed at dealers and a launch aimed at press are different events, and combining them usually serves neither well.

Phase three: the weeks nobody budgets for

The product is announced. Interest exists. And this is where most of it evaporates.

Enquiries arrive and need somewhere to land. Stock has to be where the interest is. The people who were curious on launch day need to encounter the product again — in a shop, in a demonstration, in an ad — before they forget.

What success looks like: somebody who heard about it on day one can actually buy it in week three, near where they live.

Budgets routinely allocate most of the money to phase two and almost nothing to phase three. The result is a well-attended launch followed by a slow fade, and a conclusion that the launch "didn't convert" — when what actually happened is that nothing followed it.

The failure that looks like success

Good photographs. Full room. Coverage in the trade press. Everyone pleased.

And in the market, three weeks later: the dealer has one unit, cannot explain the difference from last year's model, and the customer who saw it online cannot find anyone nearby who stocks it.

Nothing about the evening was wrong. The evening was simply the only thing that was planned.

Two questions worth asking early

Before the venue, before the creative, before anything:

Can the network sell this on the morning after? If not, the internal phase is not finished, and the date should probably move.

Where does interest go on day two? If the honest answer is "we'll see", phase three does not exist yet, and most of the launch spend is about to be wasted. Both questions are where a product launch plan should start, not where it ends.

Questions people ask

How far in advance should a product launch be planned?: Long enough to complete the internal phase properly — training the network, getting stock into position, preparing the sales story. That is usually the constraint, not the event production. A launch date set by marketing without checking distribution readiness is the most common planning error.
Should a launch target dealers or customers?: Both, but rarely in the same room. Dealers want commercial specifics — margin, positioning, support. Customers and press want the idea. Combining them means the dealer session is diluted for an audience that does not care, and the public session is cluttered with detail that means nothing to them.
How do we measure whether a launch worked?: Not by attendance or coverage alone. The measurable questions are whether the network could sell it immediately, whether enquiries in the following weeks converted, and whether stock moved in the launch region compared to a comparable one. See proving an activation worked for the same discipline applied more generally.
What proportion of budget should go to the event itself?: There is no universal ratio, but if the launch evening consumes nearly all of it, the plan is almost certainly missing phase three. Reserve meaningful budget for the weeks after — that is when the interest the event created either becomes sales or disappears.