Most launches are announced too early, prepared too late, and forgotten by the following Tuesday. The fix is not more effort in the final week. It is the right work in the right order, starting about six weeks out. This is the checklist we run.
Week six: decide whether this is news
Start with the question most companies skip. Is this an announcement or a story?
An announcement is a fact about your company: a version number, a hire, a partnership signed. A story is a change in the world that your announcement is evidence of. Reporters cover stories. Announcements go in your newsletter.
- Write the one-sentence version a reporter would use. If it starts with your company name, rewrite it until it starts with the reader.
- Identify the claim that is genuinely new. First, largest, only, or contradicts an assumption. No claim, no launch.
- Decide the audience that must hear this: customers, investors, talent, regulators, or the market at large. The answer changes every choice below.
- Kill it if it fails. A weak launch costs more than silence, because it teaches reporters to ignore the next one.
Week five: build the proof
- Assemble the numbers and their sources. Every figure you will say out loud needs a citation you would show a fact-checker.
- Line up the third parties. A customer, a partner, an investor, or an independent expert who will speak on the record. One credible outside voice is worth three internal quotes.
- Write the narrative document: what changed, why it matters, what happens next, and the three hardest questions with your answers. This is the document everything else is cut from.
- Settle the messaging with the people who will be quoted. Not talking points to memorize. Positions they actually hold and can defend in a live interview.
Week four: choose the shape
- Exclusive or embargo. One outlet gets it first for a deeper piece, or several get it at once for breadth. Funding rounds usually want breadth. Product and category stories usually want one strong exclusive.
- Owned-first or earned-first. Some stories are better told in your own voice first, with press following. Most are not. Decide deliberately.
- Date and time. Avoid the days your sector's biggest players own. Avoid Fridays. Avoid anything within a week of a major scheduled event in your category unless you are part of it.
- The page it lands on. Every story needs a destination on your site that a reporter can link and a reader can act on. Build it now, not the night before.
Week three: brief the press
- Reporter list built by beat, not by outlet size. The right person at a trade publication beats the wrong person at a national.
- Exclusive offered, or embargo pitches sent, with the narrative document attached. One reporter per outlet.
- Interviews scheduled inside the embargo window. Spokespeople blocked and rehearsed. Rehearsal means someone asks the hard questions out loud, not a read-through of the deck.
- Assets ready: images, logos, headshots, a short video if the story supports one. In the formats outlets actually use.
Week two: prepare the amplification
- Owned channels scheduled: social posts, newsletter edition, website banner, and the founder's own accounts, all pointing at the landing page.
- Internal team briefed on what is being said, what is not, and when. Sales and support get the customer-facing version. Employees get asked to share, never required.
- Investors and key customers told before the public. A partner who reads your news in the press before hearing it from you is a relationship you have damaged.
- The crisis version drafted. What if the story is received badly, a competitor responds, or a reporter finds the angle you hoped they would not? Decide the response now, while nobody is angry.
Launch week
- Embargo lifts. Coverage tracked in real time, by a person, not a tool.
- Every story pushed through owned channels within the hour, credited to the outlet, linked properly.
- Spokespeople available for follow-ups all day. The second-wave interviews are often better than the first.
- Corrections requested only for factual errors, immediately, politely, and once.
The week after
- Coverage packaged: a single page with every placement, for the sales team, the board, and the next fundraise.
- Second-day angles pitched to the outlets that did not cover it: the reaction, the customer story, the data a week in.
- Post-mortem held with everyone involved. What landed, what did not, and what to change. Written down, because the next launch is coming.
- The next story scheduled. Launches compound when they arrive in a rhythm and evaporate when they arrive as one-offs.
The one thing that matters most
Everything on this list is downstream of week six. If the claim is not genuinely new, the best execution in the world produces a well-organized non-event. Spend the time there first.
If you would rather hand the whole sequence to a team that runs it every month, that is what our launch and full-service work is built for.
Want this run for you?
Gokhshtein PR is a full-service firm: earned media, thought leadership, launches, crisis, and investor communications for founders, brands, and leaders in any sector — one senior team, inside a daily newsroom.