After attending the press opening for Artek’s new Pavilion in Helsinki* the past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about product launches and how they are (or should be) different in this day and age compared to the time before omnipresent blogging and the web 2.0 way of doing business characterized by online buzz and viral word-of-mouth marketing strategies. And how it all ties up with political campaigning.
We could call these two approaches the digital product launch (using the reach of the web’s long tail by giving the rock-star-bloggers and decision shapers in your respective margin all the information in an easily packaged form so they can form their own subjective and credible opinion on your product) and the old analog product launch (the big-money launches with famous PR agencies, press releases,
elaborate cocktail receptions and hideous speeches by CEOs reading verbatim what
the corporate spin doctors have devised for them).
Don Dodge and Marshall Kirkpatric give timely advice on how to use the power of Internet, when launching your products and new ventures. But how could you apply these principles for your political career? Here’s a few ideas.
- 1st up. Write a pre-launch FAQ – In this case you are the product, so you should write a FAQ about yourself. By giving an easy to read, clear and concise answers upfront to the political press and bloggers you minimize the very real chances that the lazy political columnists and journalists will draw conclusions about the issues you stand for based on the headlines they have seen in the Yellow Press. In a similar manner if you’re a new candidate this will increase the changes that the same lazy bloggers will blog about you instead of the next guy -in their eyes all new candidates look more or less the same, and if you are the only one giving them easy to read information about yourself nicely packaged on your social media optimized website, the changes are that you will make the cut when fighting for the media attention. …and if you’re really hard core you do as Kirkpatric advices and provide ‘embeddable screencast or demo video’ but if this seems overwhelming ‘good looking screenshots go a long way too.’
- Find out who are the ‘A-list bloggers’ for your constituency ie. the online ‘Mavens”
(to use the Tipping Point language) and the opinion shapers whose
opinions are respected and trusted in the market you operate in. Tell
them about yourself (see the bullet point above) and very briefly why
your cause is so remarkable.
- If you don’t already know who are the bloggers in your market, how do you find
them? Kirkpatrick seems to have an answer to this as well [here]. Personally I like to use del.icio.us or just plain old Google Search, even though it is not as sexy as all the web 2.0 tools.
- Next up. Do as Kirkpatrick advices:"Once you’ve got all this information available on your website, you can
send a 2 or 3 line inquiry out to bloggers. ‘We’re launching a
thing-a-mabob. Here’s the info if you’re interested.
http://mycompany.info/thingamabob Please don’t hesitate to contact me
if you have any questions about it. Thanks.’ That works great,
especially if you are emailing bloggers that you’ve already built
relationships with." The ‘thing-a-mob’ in your case can be the campaign you are about to launch for the cause you care about so deeply.
- Then you just hope that the cycle feeds itself as Dodge describes it: ‘Once the blog world spreads a story about your product the trade press
will pick it up too, which in turn feeds another round of stories,
comments, and reactions.’ Reportedly Kirkpatrick was able to generate 250 blog posts by combining the new digital product launch strategies with the traditional analog ones. You do that, and you should be well on your way to winning that crucial election. As Dodge said ‘When they blog, people listen.’
I admit that these new digital product launch tactics might be more valuable when you talk about software releases since the market and the respective bloggers are already familiar in getting most of their info on new products from the web, but it does not hurt the be the guy who heads this development in the political sphere. Who knows, maybe the sole fact that you are the 1st one in your market to do this will get you enough publicity to win those elections.
*I believe that if Artek had targeted the A-list bloggers of sustainable construction/architecture/design industry (who these people might be I have no idea, but I’m sure every industry has at least a couple) they would have conquered exponentially more media space, especially internationally, than they did by inviting the local media for a glass of champaign. This tactic would’ve been especially good for a comparatively small company spearheading the industry with innovative and sustainably responsible products without the burden of ugly monopoly to defend (think Microsoft or Pepsi). ….and No! Artek doesn’t pay for me to write this. Call me a Finnish cliche, but I just like Artek, Alvar Aalto and the functional and affordable design they echo, not to mention the ‘Sustainability as Attitude’ motto or the creative use of technology in their furniture.
