the product launch pr checklist (what to do six weeks out)

launch day coverage is decided weeks before launch day. by the time the product is live, the journalists who matter have either had it under embargo with a story half-written, or they are hearing about it alongside everyone else, at which point you are competing with that day's actual news. here is the working sequence we run, six weeks out.

week six: lock the story

before any outreach, agree the angle. not the feature list, the story: what changes because this exists, for whom, against what status quo. write the one-paragraph version and the one-line version. if neither survives the "so what" test from someone outside the company, fix the story before booking a single call. everything downstream inherits this decision.

week five: build the kit

press release (short, written like news, not like marketing), founder bio and photography, product screenshots or imagery that an editor can actually run, the data point or proof that anchors the claim, and a faq covering the awkward questions. journalists run what is easy to run. a complete kit is a competitive advantage in itself.

week four: the target list

ten to twenty names, not two hundred. people who cover your specific space, ranked by fit, with the last relevant piece each one wrote noted next to their name. this list is the whole game; an hour spent here saves a hundred ignored emails later. wire releases are not on the list because wire releases are where launch news goes to be unread.

week three: embargoed outreach

personal pitches to the top of the list, offering the story under embargo with launch-day timing. lead with their angle, not your excitement. embargoes give writers time to do a proper piece, which gets you depth instead of a rewritten press release. follow up once, politely, and take silence as an answer.

week two: founder warm-up

the founder posts the worldview, not the product: the problem, the market shift, the contrarian take. this primes the audience so launch-day coverage lands on warm ground, and gives journalists quotable context they can lift.

week one: confirm and choreograph

confirm embargo timings, deliver final assets, line up the owned channels, site, email, social, to fire in sequence with the coverage, and brief whoever handles replies. launch day itself should be boring: everything was decided already.

after: the second wave

coverage begets coverage. the week after, pitch the follow-on angles: early numbers, user stories, lessons. most teams collapse after launch day and leave this entirely on the table.

this sequence is our press launch sprint in checklist form. launching something in the next quarter? six weeks goes fast. let's talk.