Most Inventive Product Launch

From Our NEW PRODUCT CAMPAIGN ALERT BLOG OF 2005-06 Reviewing a Movie, Car, and Cellular Service

And The Winner Is: General Motors and its Hummer H3

H3 Builds Community. The goal of a Ecosystem or Connected Community launch is to involve all possible vendors and channels to form a Community to participate in your product launch. This works best when each member of the community benefits from the product’s success. For example, application vendors participate in a Microsoft Windows launch because they will sell upgrades and new applications.

Hummer, long loved by loyal owners and fans, and just as equally loathed by environmentalists and some consumer groups, launched a new model that it hopes will win over at least some critics, according to Don Hammonds of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Luckily for those critics, General Motors can buy its community. For Hummer, the American Red Cross and the NFL are acquired. We know that the NFL’s relationship with GM predates the birth of most of today’s players, but the Red Cross is interesting in that it gets in-kind and cash benefits as well as a new source of volunteers.

• Red Cross: Under the Hummer Owners Prepared for Emergencies (H.O.P.E.) volunteer program, members of the Hummer Club are volunteering to assist the American Red Cross in disaster-relief efforts. Hummer Club members will be certified as Red Cross volunteers to be deployed in local chapter- and national relief operations. They will drive supplies and people into disaster areas that other vehicles might not be able to reach. The General Motors Foundation contributed $4 million in support of this effort.
• NFL: Flexing its marketing muscle, GM kicked off its Hummer H3 launch on ESPN. H3 sponsored the official NFL Draft Pre-Party and the NFL draft-viewing parties at ESPN Zone restaurants in major U.S. cities. And, would you believe, on display at these parties were H3’s!

Geisha Goes For Oscar Impact. A blockbuster film launch is designed to create a big-bang impact to win market. Think of Hollywood with spotlights in the sky and kimono-clad actresses strutting down the red carpet. This was the opening for Memoirs of a Geisha, and the prototypical Hollywood Launch is all about impact for first weekend box office sales. Looking back, we know that Geisha bombed, as did The Da Vinci Code. Rather this was the year of the Penguins. One loud complaint was that the lead actresses in Geisha were Chinese, not Japanese. Ah! but that’s Hollywood.

Hollywood’s familiar and much-used launch process can be mimicked, although entertainment’s advantage is that it owns an information infrastructure vastly different from other industries. Witness Geisha-hype in the following articles all published on November 10, 2005: Time Magazine headlined, “It took seven years and a lot of crying.” The L.A. Times headlined, “Can Rob Marshall finally have his Oscar now.” Another article in the L.A. Times was on costume design: “Eastern Lore, Western Allure,” and was all about creating the Memoirs of a Geisha wardrobe. − All of this is a month before the movie even opens!

As we know, movies try to line up a community of tie-ins to give legs to the various promotions. “Geisha: It's the essence of retail spinoff’s,” headlined USA Today. Blended green tea and rice face-wash are just two spin-off products inspired by the film, Memoirs of a Geisha.

New Cell Phone Company Teaser. A teaser campaign is designed to arouse interest in something coming, often relying on brand to sell the message. Unfortunately for Amp’d Mobile, they are a start-up, and have no brand because there is no customer experience. Start-ups have no brand, period. Their teaser campaign is DOA: "Try not to die. Amp'd Mobile is coming."

Sure, this strategy has launched twenty new vodkas in the past five years, but liquor is a vastly different business than that of a subscription cellular company. Not to worry, with no brand recognition and no differentiation, Amp'd Mobile won’t be around for long.