When launching a physical product, your PR campaign needs to line up with the manufacturing timeline. If the two are misaligned, your product launches with a significant disadvantage. The Samsung Galaxy Fold, which launched in 2019, had issues with early devices’ defective screens.

The product launch had to be pushed back for five months. A textbook example of a PR campaign that outran manufacturing readiness. With that in mind, let’s explore the steps for planning PR for a physical product launch.

Phase 1, Days 1 to 30: Aligning PR with Production

Before any outreach begins, you should examine the manufacturing calendar and consider the following:

• Sample readiness rate
• Final production date
• Certification completion
• Packaging
• Retail window

All PR activities should be coordinated with such factors. End-to-end private label beverage development involves many interdependent stages, and a delay in any one of them can cascade directly into your PR window.

When launching a beverage, you need to have samples ready before you start your marketing campaign because, without samples, you can’t have a reviewer program. Assuming you’re selling your product in the US, you’ll need to have FDA certifications ready, as publications often won’t mention your product without the appropriate accreditations.

You also need to know when your product will go to market. PR coverage that kicks off before your product drops creates demand the brand can’t fulfill, damaging the brand’s reputation and impacting launch momentum.

Phase 2, Days 15 to 45: Media Kit Creation

At this point, you should be ready to create a media kit. A media kit for a physical product should include the following:

• High-resolution product photography
• Nutritional information
• Comprehensive digital files that journalists and reviewers can use to pull all the assets
  they need without the need for emails going back and forth

Phase 3, Days 32 to 60: Seeding and Embargo Strategy

Product seeding is when you send physical samples of your product to figures like:

• Journalists
• Influencers
• Reviewers

Generally, you do this a few weeks ahead of launch, giving this group ample time to sample the product and put their reviews out. According to Dynamics of Writing, at this point, you’ll place an embargo on the product, meaning reviewers and journalists can’t reveal information about the product before a certain date.

Days 45 to 75: Outreach and Pitch

Sending out pitches to various media outlets. You should time this according to the outlet type. For example, national print magazines generally need around 3 to 4 months of lead time, so the pitch must go out well before day 1 of your PR strategy. Social media influencers, on the other hand, work at a much faster pace.

Every influence is different, but usually, you only need around 2 to 4 weeks of buffer time for sending your pitch.

Days 60 to 90: Contingency Planning for Delays

As anyone who’s ever been involved in a high-stakes project knows, you should expect the unexpected, and that delays can happen. The best PR plans are those that have delay protocols built in from day one.

Because manufacturing delays are the norm for physical product launches, the delay of a few weeks is usually manageable from a PR perspective. But if the delay is going to be for more than a month, it might make sense to stand down on the public relations campaign and re-evaluate.

Aligning PR with Product Launch

The best PR campaign in the world won’t be successful if you launch it at the wrong moment. Your campaign needs to be in sync with your product launch; otherwise, you risk a wasted PR campaign.

If you’re interested in learning more about similar topics, check out the rest of our blog posts.