Danger: Launch Ahead!

Jeremy McKinley
Oct 30, 2020
13 min read

As a marketing professional for the better part of the last two decades, I’ve been involved with more launches than I can remember. I’ve been a part of the team or managed a team for both product launches and program launches. Some of them have been great successes, while others have been somewhere between meh and downright awful. As I think back on all of this experience, the same can be said for another kind of launch I’ve been a part of throughout my life: mountain biking. In either instance, I've learned that there are specific things you can do to prepare yourself for a successful launch - whatever that may be.

I’ve been a mountain biker since cantilever brakes and rigid forks were common equipment, and for the most part, I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve fallen a few times, but I’ve gotten away pretty easy compared to some of my friends. Maybe that’s because I’m not as adventurous or don’t push my limits as far as others might. As you ride more, and you push yourself harder, the risk goes up and your level of preparation needs to follow.

"Look before you leap” becomes a mantra that any rider ignores at their risk, and riders looking to up their game by launching off larger and larger things ignore it at their peril.

You can look at my shoulders and witness my side-armed throwing motion to see evidence of the two times disregarded or otherwise misjudged my ability to launch.

The first time was very early in my “race” career. I put the word race in quotes because racing in my case means paying someone to ride specific trails for an hour or so with a bunch of other people who generally go a lot faster than me. This particular race was my first, and only, downhill mountain bike race. I had arrived a day early to take numerous practice runs with my friend Dan. I’d been good - always looking at where I planned to leap. I’d walked the course, checking out things I knew were going to be challenging for me. I identified two spots where I knew I’d be riding around rather than over, and one spot that was scary, but probably doable. In each of my practice runs, I found the fastest way around the two big rock drops toward the top, but I was still on the fence about the drop toward the bottom.

Each time I rode up to this particular stunt, a medium sized boulder with a black arrow pointing off the edge met me. I’d slow, take a good look, and think “I could so do that.” But then, I’d chicken out and ride around to the right through a narrow gap between the boulder and a tree, usually hitting my pedal on either the tree or the boulder. This portion of the ride was always slow and messy, but I knew I could make this drop. By the time I met Dan at the bottom of the course and we got ready to get back on the shuttle and go up again for more practice, I had decided I was going to go for it on the next run. Unfortunately, I never got the chance. The truck to the shuttle was full and by the time we got another, it was too late for another practice. Instead, I settled in to wait for my turn, stretched, and tried to visualize my run.

Before too long I was at the start line listening to the race official countdown - “5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go!” The first part of my run went just as planned. I stayed smooth, took the easy way around the two big drops at the top, and was feeling fast. I was only getting one run so I had to make it count. Two thirds of the way through the course, I came around a left hand bend and saw the third big drop with the arrow at the top. I wasn’t surprised to see it, but I didn’t expect to be there so soon or with such speed. I remembered that I had decided to do it the next time I saw it and headed for the arrow instead of the ride-around between the boulder and the tree. Never mind that I hadn’t practiced it.

Now, there are quite a few calculations that need to be completed when launching yourself off of a large boulder…

Practice and planning help. The correct speed and angle are among the two most important calculations you need to make. I miscalculated both. I’m sure it was impressive to watch me launch off the end of that boulder with so much speed. To this day I wish there’d been someone there with a video camera - I’d really like to see how I managed to get it so wrong. I completely overshot the landing, and instead of bailing in the air, I tried to land it. With my front wheel way too far down and a right hand corner coming fast, it was over before it started.

The oohs and ahhhs from the crowd of people lining this part of the course registered somewhere in my panic brain and I did the only thing I knew to do when I crashed in a race: get up and try to get back on the course as quickly as possible. Two things stopped me. The first was that my left arm no longer worked normally. As I inhaled in pain and cradled my arm to my chest, I realized that even if I had managed to get on my bike, it wasn’t going anywhere. The front wheel looked like a taco - the inner-tube like a deflated snake laying in the trail. My day on the trail was over. My day in the emergency room, however, was just about to get started. My separated left shoulder would keep me off the bike for the rest of the year.

The second miscalculated launch on the trail came as a result of me being overconfident in my abilities and following a group of other riders off the edge. But since this post is getting a little long, we'll leave that story for another time. Suffice it to say that my failed launch resulted in my right shoulder being separated and another long absence from the bike.

I like to think that I learn from my mistakes. And I like to take mistakes from one part of my life and let them inform other parts of my life. Both my successful and unsuccessful mountain bike launches have taught me quite a bit about how to plan, prepare, and practice. That knowledge has helped me understand how to give a product launch it’s best chance at success as well.

For many reasons, I’m not here to write about the finer points of launching on a mountain bike; but rather, how to think about your product launch in a way that gives you the best chance of success in today’s retail environment. You only get one chance to launch your product, so you have to get it right.

It’s easy to build a display, put a product on it, and hope for the best...

But that’s kinda like launching off a cliff without looking before you leap. It might work out, but likely not. Like in my bike scenario, there are many factors to calculate and adjust for. Each course, each product or program launch, is a unique experience.

A fully thought-out product launch is different from other ways a company might introduce a product to the world in a few important ways. A launch is part of a strategy to not only introduce a product, but to create a connection with your consumer that will lead to a cycle of sales. It has a before, during, after, and a circle back and hit it again phase. It has specific goals and objectives, and is more than just a pretty design and clever messaging. A launch guides and informs the brand story in real-time, empowers retail associates to do their jobs better, and charts the course for overall product experience. It is important to the whole company, not just the marketing department.

No matter what your product people believe, “build it and they will come” is a myth. It’s always been a myth.

Even in instances where it seems like people followed that method and succeeded, there were likely hours and hours of behind the scenes work, practice runs, and refinement put into the planning and implementation of the launch before it could make its debut. In all cases, what is seen as “built” is only ever the tip of the iceberg. We never really hear about products that use the “build it and they will come” method as their go-to-market strategy, and there is a reason for that.

So, how can you develop successful launches that go the length? First off, if you’ve ever participated in a product launch in the past, you know that there are things that you have control over and others that you do not. One of the most important aspects of a successful product launch is often something that you do not have no control over:

Have a great product.

Any launch will be better if the product is awesome. Even poorly conceived launches have a chance if the product is amazing. So, while you may not have control over the actual product, there is one big thing you can do in this area to help your launch:

Do the work.

Talk to the product people and get the history of the product. Find out why this product exists, who it was built for, and what is important about it. Keep asking these questions until you get the answers you need. I’ve found that some product people will tell you about features of a product all day, but have a hard time telling you why those features matter. You need to have a good understanding of who this product is for, and why they are going to want it. Keep pushing until you get that answer. This way, even if the product isn’t awesome, at least you’ll have a good idea of the who and the why of what you are going after. Now, onto the things you have at least some control over:

Be responsible.

First of all, before you go any further… assign a person who is directly responsible for the launch. Collaboration is great and depending on the size of your organization, a launch needs more than a few people working together to pull it off. But, to have the best chance at a truly successful launch you need one person who is wholly responsible, fully informed, and completely accountable for the launch’s development from start to finish. Call this person what you will. Apple calls them the DRI or Directly Responsible Individual, and that works as well as anything else.

Know what a great launch is.

Marketing is a dark art. Or so you are led to believe. The best way to get around this idea is to know what you are looking to get out of the launch. Is it impressions? (I hope not). Is it engagement? Foot traffic? Social noise? Sales? Something else? I’m not here to tell you what you should be measuring; there are tons of articles out there telling you what they think you should be measuring in your marketing, launch or not. What I want you to know is that knowing what you want matters.

Additionally, knowing what matters to whom also matters. The salespeople want one thing, the marketing team another, and the product people still something else. And don’t forget what senior management expects either. You need to know what these things are and take the time to define those metrics to know how they will be measured. You don’t want to be in a situation where you think you’ve knocked it out of the park and another stakeholder feels like it’s been a waste of time. Make sure everyone is on the same page as to what makes a great launch.

Know your user.

If you’ve done the work we’ve discussed above, you should have a good idea of who your audience is. Now is the time to really dial it in. Knowing your audience is one thing, but knowing who is in that audience is another. People are not groups, they are people, and while you can’t realistically talk to people one-on-one, you can make sure a large part of the group you are talking to feels like you are talking to just them. You need to have a true, better-than-surface-level awareness of the people within the groups you are launching to in order to understand what will resonate with them. You won’t capture them all, but if you know your audience well, you’ll click with enough of them.

Once you’ve done the research and know who the people are in your audience, you’ll be able to figure out what to say to get their attention. You’ll also have the ability to figure out where they are - where they live online, and in real life, who they hang out with, what their interests are, what preferences they have, etc. - which gives you a better strategy to fine tune and deliver your message at the right time.

There are limitless things to say, thousands of ways to say it, and hundreds of ways to deliver your message. If you don’t truly *get* the individuals in your audience, you’ll be launching blind... and I can assure you, the landing will be rough.

Make it as easy as possible.

Launching a product, or yourself and a bike off a steep drop, is not easy, especially when you first start. It takes courage, confidence, practice, and patience. Do what you can to make it as easy as possible to pull it off. Reduce uncertainty and intimidation by keeping yourself and the team of people taking care of the many launch touch points informed.

To make things as easy as possible, you have to think about the humans that are actually doing the work. What do they need? Behind every touch point there is a person, and unless that person is you, they need to know not only what to do and how to do it, but why.

Your first task is to “manage up.” The better you manage your manager the better you can clear the way for the people that need to do the work. If you know what your managers are expecting and are active in forming those expectations, the more your managers will get out of your way and let you and the launch team execute.

Another thing that must happen, and so many people forget, is the act of “marketing the marketing.” Make sure people in your organization know what is going on. Give ‘em some context: what was the premise for, the plan behind, and the strategy that guided the launch’s development? Why were decisions made? What key things will this solve for and how will we know it’s working? This will help everyone involved know the what and why of the launch. Creating a plan for communicating about the launch (not the product itself) will be essential to the success of the launch. It may seem like a lot of extra work. It may also seem kind of dangerous, doesn’t it? I assure you: it is work, but it is not extra. It’s essential. If you do this work ahead of time, the less launch day hitches you’ll experience and the easier it will be to make sense of and organize all the moving people and parts involved with getting the product to market successfully.

The last step in making your launch as easy as possible, as I learned in the amazing book Switch by the Heath Brothers, is to script the critical moves. If you want something to happen in a certain way at a certain time, make sure to script that out for the person responsible for doing it, even if that person is you. I’m not talking about taking the life out of your launch by making a rigid plan; that is bound to fail. What I’m talking about, however, is making sure that people know what is supposed to happen and why it’s supposed to happen. When flexibility is needed, having a script with the right information will guide those changes in the right directions.

Extra Credit

Before we finish up this lengthy post, I want to talk about something that has become more and more important over the last few years. In fact, it may no longer be extra credit to a launch. I believe that having a purpose behind the product and therefore the launch is a necessary part of your success. When you understand how a product supports and contributes to the overall purpose of your company, commitment to your community, or core beliefs as an organization, it becomes easier to extrapolate truly useful, value-rich, resonant information to share with your customers – people who are likely interested in your product because they are of a similar frame of mind and already feel somehow connected to what you stand for and/or believe in.

I’ll use a launch that I was only tangentially part of while working at Trek as an example. In 2014 when the Bontrager Flare R was launched many thought, me included, that it was just another blinky light. How big of a deal could it be? But we quickly learned that it was much more than that; it was a product that was developed to save lives. Before long everyone got behind this idea, from the President of the company to the retailers that sold the product in their stores. It was much more than a blinky light; it was a product with an important cause. The launch was a huge success. Before the Flare R, a rear light was something the bike shop tried to sell you as an add-on sale. After the Flare R, daytime running lights were something you wouldn’t leave the store without.

There should be a purpose behind your product. That purpose needs to come through loud and clear in your launch.

To wrap this up, I want to share with you something that one of my mentors said about launches: “marketing is just the last mile.” So much goes into the launch of a product, much of which most will never know about. A successful launch is an elusive beast - it’s a surprisingly substantial amount of work for what appears to be such a simple “build it and they will come” scenario. But when done correctly, launches have the ability to stop people in their tracks. Successful launches also never really end. A truly successful launch has a follow-up plan and should undergo a thorough post-mortem. By the end of that process, you should know exactly what you’d do again and what you’d leave behind. Every launch informs the next.

These days when I ride my bike with my kids, they are used to me launching off boulders, logs, and anything else I can huck off. I don’t go as big, but it’s still a risk. My kids aren’t even impressed any more! They have no idea how much went into making it look so easy. It’s been years of looking before I leap, working up the knowledge, success and failure, that has led me to a point where I know what I can launch and what I can’t.

The point is: you may not know how or have all the resources needed to have a successful launch. After-all, it takes time to truly master anything, especially with many controllable and uncontrollable factors at play. Retailwerx can help you get it done. We’ve been through it. We know what it takes to skillfully navigate each step. You only have one chance to launch your product or program. As your primary launch team or as a counterpart to your existing, we make sure your launch experience doesn’t end with you cradling your arm to your chest as you wait for a ride to the emergency room!