AMA: Cameo Former VP of Marketing, Mike Polner on Product Launches

One of my favorite activations that we did was super early on Uber Eats was we produced a bunch of fortune cookies with fun fortunes and promo codes in them. Then we distributed them to drivers to give to passengers in the back of their Ubers. The idea was to help convert Riders to try Uber Eats. It was a fun idea, but it was largely unsuccessful simply because it was such a large operational lift. The saying is do things that don't scale, but sometimes, things that don't scale also don't work! 

Good question! A lot of this nuance comes from what stage you're at and the type of excitement you're looking to drive. A steady drumbleat of regular product launches keeps momentum up - helps shape an ongoing story, and can build excitement up for a big launch. I generally prefer the big splash. I think of a well-connected and highly integrated launch approach like a new car unveiling where you lift up the curtain on what you've been working on. These make a disproportionate amount of noise and can help cut-through all the other things in the market. Smaller launches should be used in tandem with the big moment, but if you're not cutting through, it's probably not making a huge difference.

Love this question. I take a 1 is greater than 0, even if it's less than 100 strategy here. Talking to any customers is better than talking to no customers. Obviously if you have sufficient time you'll want to gather feedback (qual + quant) on both the product experience, the positioning, and any campaign messaging or assets that you have. I find that's rarely the case though and almost everything is done with half the time and a quarter the resources you'd like. In that case, I take a best guess at messaging and positioning - create some assets or tools for somebody to react to. Push notifications, an email, landing page, in-product copy - whatever - and get them in front of people. In a small sample and exercise like this, you're looking for responses on the edge - are there any words you use that are confusing? Are there elements that really resonate? Is the messaging clear, concise, and concrete? From there, you can take another crack at it, make revisions, and get ready to go. 

I wish I could say I have some secret weapon tool that's truly magical, unfortunately, I am just a Google Docs power user. More broadly, I should say that keeping stakeholders engaged comes more from a tight operating cadence than just a tool. This boils down to: 1. Have a clear goal and vision. 2. Tell the appropriate people about it (ie., inform the right folks, and designate the responsible parties so it's clear who's doing what.) 3. Have a regular operational meeting cadence. Meetings, done well, are super high leverage. 4. Send out regular communications to let the appropriate parties know what's happening. I should also take this opportunity to shamelessly plug https://www.haveignition.com/ which is attempting to solve this exact problem in a pretty cool, automated way. Full disclosure, I'm an investor in the company, but think they're doing some cool things for the PMM community!

It may not be unique, but I think one that both startups and large companies alike don't prioritize enough is a clear, concise PR strategy with launch. Early on Eats we didn't have a lot of money to spend on paid media or flashy integrated campaigns to get the word out, but we had the fortune of being a company a lot of people cared about and wanted to hear more from. Every product launch we had started with the external story we wanted to tell in close partnership with our comms teams. In some cases, we would work with the comms team to understand what stories they were telling then find the right product / feature that could support that. It's an incredibly powerful, "free" channel that can drive a lot of awareness without a lot of money. Put another way, when a startup announces a round of funding and secures a bunch of press coverage, you sometimes see registrations, page views, etc go up 5 - 10X - why wouldn't we want a product launch to do something similar? 

The biggest change between an initial product launch and subsequent smaller launches comes with how you move between truly top-of-funnel tactics into more mid or lower funnel engagement. In an initial launch you're trying to tell people that this new thing that you could have never imagined now exists. I called out PR being a huge lever that I'm a fan of in an initial launch, but the real impact of that channel can only come one time when something is "news." Smaller launches getting bundled into larger stories also starts with your business objectives and how much cut-through you're hoping to achieve. There are moments when a high-level narrative can be supported more from a bundle of features that likely wouldn't stand alone if they were all separate. When bundling (or not), I would ask myself: 1. What are we trying to achieve? 2. What are the products, features, proof-points at my disposal? 3. Are the products, features, proof-points strong enough individually to support what we're trying to achieve? 4. If not, you may want to bundle into a larger story that can make more of a splash. 

I've tried a tiering system a few times, but honestly, have never made it stick. There needs to be a relative sizing of a launch, but I don't think it's so black and white where you can say this is Tier 1 and Tier 1 gets XYZ and this is Tier 3 and Tier 3 only gets X. I think a better way to do it is starting at the top. What are your business goals and objectives. What are the narratives and the stories you want to tell. Then, what are the launches, products, activations that support those stories. Once you have a relative prioritization of those - you can define the amount of muscle you want to put behind each one. Generally, as a rule of thumb, you can land one major launch a quarter. That would mean a fairly sizable integrated campaign across paid, owned, and earned. If you're looking at just owned channels - you should be able to squeeze 1 - 3 of those out per quarter. 

Every organization looks dramatically different, so I don't think there's one size fits all for a template. I would generally say: 1. Understand what problem you're solving 2. Understand what skills are important in solving this problem (ie., you'll need somebody creative, you'll need some research, you'll need some analytical fire power.) 3. Recruit the folks you need early. 4. Think about all the ways something can go wrong. Plan for paths of failure or contingencies. Where are there risks and soft spots in a plan. Make sure risks are known and have other teams (ie., support, account manager) aware of those risks so they're not caught off guard. Over communicate in a launch. I've never had anybody in an organization tell me I'm communicating too much. 

Broadly, alignment with Product should happen in an OKR or goals planning process at some regular interval. That's the real moment to align with you product partners on what problems you're trying to solve and what success means for a number of initiatives. More specifically, I push that Product Marketing co-owns Product goals (to ensure alignment) and that they're the responsible party for product adoption metrics. What % of the audience has tried XYZ product is a strong measure of adoption and engagement. Product launch KPIs should ladder into an adoption target (as stated above), but secondary metrics can range from anything like awareness (how many people have heard of the product), loyalty (what's the NPS of the product) or engagement (are you increasing frequency and usage within an existing cohort.) 

I think the basics called out here are nice building blocks, but a few more tactical examples to help: * Listen to customers. "Know your audience" is too broad of a term, but actually listening to what they have to say - and most importantly - what they react to is key to a great story. Stories evoke emotion and emotions can be visible positive feedback that your stories are resonating. Great storytellers aren't born that way, they learn through that positive feedback on what resonates and what doesn't. * Try storytelling "hacks." There are mechanics and structures of storytelling that help break through the noise - one of my favorite is inserting things that are unexpected. An example here is taking an existing struture or belief and changing the perception. On Eats, we had an early insight that food delivery was broken forks and plastic bags (which we heard from listening to customers!) Our whole story became breaking the stereotypes of food delivery - where, how, and what you could get from a food delivery business. * Rinse & repeat. Use very opportunity possible to tell stories and practice doing so. Stories can be big - company presentations, press releases, product launch videos - or they can be small - headlines in emails, kickoffs for a meeting, even telling friends stories about your day. More practice, the better! For a good book on storytelling, I highly recommend "Made to Stick" which really helped me understand structure of story too.