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Product Launch

Product Launch — a guide for the marketing manager

A product launch has a fixed date and a moving part count that grows every time someone approves a slide. The venue locks first, then the concept, then the tech spec that makes the concept possible in that room. Most launches fail in the gap between those three.

The season sets the venue shortlist and the backup plan. A summer launch can move outside if the room proves too small; a winter one cannot. That decision happens before the creative brief, not after.

The date is fixed and the venue follows

Product timings do not bend for venue availability. You are working backwards from a launch date set by product, not forward from an open calendar. That means the venue shortlist is written by whoever is free, and the season determines what free means.

Summer and early autumn: more venues, longer lead times to book them, outdoor options if capacity becomes a problem. Winter: shorter lists, earlier deposits, no plan B if the room is too small. If the launch is December to March, start the venue search the day the date is confirmed.

Decide the format before you brief the designer

A reveal works one way if the product sits on a plinth under a drape and another if it is wheeled on stage or assembled live. A demo needs a surface, power to that surface, and sightlines from every seat. A presentation needs a screen large enough that the back row reads body text, which is always larger than the marketing team estimates.

Brief the designer only after you know what the room can hold and where the product will physically be. Otherwise you are approving a concept in a deck that the venue cannot build, and you discover that when the riggers arrive.

The technical spec exists to be photographed

Lighting for a launch is not lighting for a gala. The product must be lit separately from the speaker, the logo wall must be evenly bright with no hotspots, and if there is a livestream the camera needs a level of light across the whole stage that feels unnatural to a person standing in it.

Tell the production team there will be a photographer and a livestream before they quote. A rig built for the room is rebuilt once you add broadcast, and the difference is cost and time, neither of which you have if the date is fixed.

Two kinds of agency

One kind plans the event, writes a brief, sends it to a lighting company they found that week, a caterer they have never worked with, and an AV supplier who has never been to the venue. They earn on every line and coordinate by email. If something fails, they manage the phone call.

Another kind quotes with their own crew, rigs with people who have worked that venue before, and runs the night with the same production manager who wrote the power spec. After 5 Events is the second. The people who quote are the people who build the room, and they know what fails before you ask for it.

The demo is the highest-risk moment

If the product must be demonstrated live, it needs power, internet if it connects, a surface that does not wobble, and a camera angle if it is being shown on screen while it is being used. Demos fail more than speeches, and they fail in front of the whole audience at the moment the event is about.

Rehearsal is not optional. The person demoing the product needs to stand in the room with the screen behind them, the product in front of them, and the clicker in their hand. If the first time they do that is five minutes before doors, something will be wrong and there will be no time to fix it.

Invites and capacity do not mean the same number

Two hundred invitations do not mean a venue for two hundred people if the acceptance rate is sixty percent and you expect walk-ins. But you cannot book a venue for a hundred and twenty and then add chairs when RSVPs close, because RSVPs close three days before the event and the venue books out three weeks before.

Pick the venue for the maximum you might need, not the minimum you expect. The cost of empty chairs is less than the cost of a second venue search with no time.

What to decide before you call anyone

The season and the date. The likely format: reveal, demo, presentation, or all three. Whether the event will be photographed, filmed, or livestreamed. The maximum guest count, not the likely one. Whether the CEO or the product team has approval, because if both do, the brief will be rewritten twice and the venue deposit will have already been paid.

Those answers let a production team tell you what is possible in the time you have, which venues can hold the format you want, and what the technical side costs before the creative brief is written. Without them, every conversation is conditional and every quote is a placeholder.

Who is writing this

A crew, not a middleman

These guides are written by After 5 Events — the team that grew out of the After 5 band and DJ roster and has stood on the stage itself. We are not an agency that forwards your brief to subcontractors and takes a commission on every line: the people who plan your evening build the stage, run the sound and light, and are in the room when the doors open.

When you get to booking

The pages this guide has probably made you want to ask about.

The same reader, other occasions
The same occasion from another chair
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