Normally, when the world is buzzing with anticipation for your next product, life is good. You’ve built up enough confidence in your brand that consumers and the media can blindly put their faith in your company and expect great things. It can be a fantastic situation to be in, but, as Apple is learning, it also can be a curse.
If you aren’t quite up-to-speed on the iPad, it’s basically a larger iPod Touch. At least that’s the impression everyone had as they left the show. You can check out the specs and some hands-on videos on Engadget in their iPad Hub.
If you were keeping up with the unveiling through a LiveStream on a tech blog like Engadget, you could almost feel the reporter’s hope gradually diminish. With each new post or update, the realization that this wasn’t the revolutionary device we were all hoping for slowly filtered into each new post. It became more apparent that we were unnecessarily drooling over a larger version of the iPod Touch (we say iPod Touch due to the lack of microphone and camera). It wasn’t exactly the launch everyone – including Apple – had anticipated. What went wrong? No one was managing expectations.
You want people to think your product is the “next great thing.” When you’re going into a product launch, you’re seeking out ways to get your product in front of as many potential customers as possible and you hope for the kind of “viral” pre-launch that Apple received. The problem starts to develop when you get so wrapped in your product that you’re only concentrating on how excited people are for it and not concentrating on what people are actually saying about it.Once the “hype” gets too big and your audience starts dreaming up something that’s impossible to deliver, it’s important to intervene and manage those expectations. Apple found itself in an awkward situation. While people were basking in the excitement of its new release, consumer expectations became impossible to meet. Not only can that kind of hype reflect poorly on your new product, but also your brand. This is especially important for new businesses because it means you’re starting out of the gate with the impression that you’re just another company that failed to live up to the hype.
So how do you avoid it? You manage consumer and media expectations through analysts. Now of course, there’s the media and it’s important that you manage those expectations as well; however, if you look at Apple’s launch, the media wasn’t starting all of the rumors and hype. There were a few blogs looking to increase their site traffic by posting unfound rumors, but the leads and rumors people paid attention to were actually coming from the analyst community.
By holding pre-launch and post-launch analyst teletours, you’re able to communicate your key product messaging to a group of industry leaders who will distribute your message to the media for you and if you’re careful about it, you can control that messaging to ensure expectations are within reach.
Even if you’re just trying to debunk rumors about your upcoming product launch, analysts are the most efficient and effective way to ensure that your potential customers aren’t letdown on launch day. Sure, you can try going to each blog and doing one-on-one interviews to clarify, but why even put your company in that situation? Get to the analysts early to control the message so that media interviews won’t be necessary and future stories won’t exist.
While I didn’t work on the Apple launch, I have worked on several successful product launches with other leading PC manufacturers as well as launches in other highly competitive industries (just to toot my own horn a little). By far, the best way to ensure a company exceeds consumer expectations while also controlling information dissemination for a product launch is to maintain consistent communications with the industry analysts throughout the development and unveiling process. With any new product, service or company, you want people to be excited about what you’re bringing to the industry. But you also need to make sure you’re aware of your product and have confidence that you can deliver. Exceeding expectations is always better than not meeting them. That’s why it’s important to have a third-party marketing firm with well-established ties and relationships to the analyst community there to help. Sometimes you just get too wrapped up with day-to-day operations that you’re unable to see what everyone else is doing or how everyone views your company. We provide that outsider insight and industry knowledge to ensure your launch not only exceeds your expectations, but your customers’ as well.