In a world where social media and the concept of “being seen” is king, a product launch event is a huge moment for brands to diffuse their marketing and branding messages. Something that only a few years ago could be as simple as a couple of people off the street to sip some bubbles, has now turned into a constant competition of who can do more and better.
Something important to note, is that a product launch event can be as big or as small as the client wants, or has the budget for. Literally, the sky is sometimes the limit – depending on what the product is.
When I speak with clients, I always try to understand first and foremost – “what is the goal or objective of this launch event?” is it to create a buzz? Is it to invite loyal clients? Is it to get imagery? There can be many different reasons, and all of them are valid – but all of them come with a slightly different price tag attached to them.
Let’s hypothesise and create some examples. Some are based on clients and events that I have orchestrated over the years, others are assumptions based on my knowledge of the industry. Important to note that my examples of pricing are mainly based on London pricing.
This will be slightly more expensive than other cities in Europe, but equally there is much more choice here in terms of entertainment, décor, etc.
Example Product Launch Event 1. Objective – Create a buzz around the brand
This is by far going to be the most expensive one of the three examples. If you want to create a buzz around a product launch, you are going to first of all do something big, and that is different. You want to attract attention.
Pop-ups are a great format for this.
Lidl recently for London Fashion week launched a pop-up bakery in London’s Soho. It was beautiful. They were selling their own pastries, but mostly their viral croissant bag, which is at a Lidl price point instead of a Moschino one!
Needless to say that it blew-up online, with queues around the block, and the bag sold out within one hour. Genius marketing and event coup!
The costs of something like this will have included rent of the space (difficult to tell how much that would have been, but even though the pop-up was only on for a couple of days, they would have needed to rent for probably 1 month to build and de-rig everything), décor and production, AV, staff, bakery goods, production and shipping of the bags, security, etc.
I am guessing that something like this would have cost from about £250,000 upwards.
Example Launch Event 2. Objective – Keep loyal clientele happy and feeling special
This is one of my favourite types of launch events, simply because you know the target audience well. You know what they like, what they don’t and as a planner, it means I can work straight to the point. This is often done as seasonal events, the most obvious being Christmas, but it could also be the latest season arriving in store, etc.
These events most often will happen in store of the brand in question. In an environment that the clients know well, and most likely have their habits in.
This will most likely be an educational event, accompanied by amazing food, drink and entertainment. By educational, I mean having a master tailor explain his job, a handbag makes come and make a bag in front of the clients, personalization stations etc. Something unique to the brand that is not available to anyone – only the VIPs of the brand.
These kind of events can range anywhere from £20,000 to £100,000 – this really depends on the size of the space, if rentals need to be brought in and the amount of guests to cater for
Example Product Launch 3. Objective – Imagery creation to then be diffused on Socials
For a London product launch that has less budget, this is an ideal option. You only select a few influencer guests that will not only be creating imagery themselves but will then also be diffusing your imagery that you are creating too.
This can be in the shape of an influencer or celebrity interview with only a handful of guests and press for example.
The majority of your budget will be on securing a great photo and video team that are able to churn out edits asap so that you can share on socials.
This kind of event could cost anywhere upwards from £5,000 – depending on if your influencers and celebrities also have a fee to be paid.
Overall, if you are planning a launch event, I would recommend being excessively clear on the objective of why you are doing this event, as well as your budget.
This will then impact the format of what you can do to achieve the best results and to stay within your budget.
Often, companies believe that they can do this internally, and although I am sure that you have amazing marketing teams – I would recommend hiring a planner for your product launch event.
We have all of these suppliers on our speed dial, within all of the budget ranges.
Let your marketing teams focus on the guest list, we can produce amazing experiences.
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Photo Credit: Sylvain Renard
