How to Launch a New Product in 5 Months
In June 2022, I joined Kinoo, Inc. to lead Sales and Marketing with a mandate to pivot from what they had to something NEW. But WHAT? We didn’t know!
Today we launched the Kinoo Magic Wand and started to ship the product to our Kickstarter backers.
Here, in this article, I’d like to capture and share the key milestones and strategic thought processes behind the step by step. Everyone is talking about how fast Elon Musk executed his Twitter acquisition, from the announcement of interest to his post acquisition shake-ups; clearly, speed matters!
What’s the Problem to Solve
Entrepreneurs want their products to take off. They put their heart and soul, blood, sweat, and tears into them. When they sit in front of you and tell you all the good features they’ve developed and the pain points their products solve, you’d buy them in a heart beat.
The problem is that we cannot really pitch every product to everyone. When internet levels the playing field for all access, it also raised the bar for marketing efficiency. People are generally overwhelmed with information constantly being pushed to their devices these days via internet media, emails, and direct messages.
Established brands keep up their ads spends just to keep the constant visibility and mindshare, because being on the shelves in the brick and mortar venues no longer yields the presence necessary for a competitive advantage.
Social commerce has become a driving force for brands because Millennials and Gen Z get their information on their phones via social media more than their predecessors. In this context, I recognized that we had a social awareness deficiency at Kinoo, and that was one of the problems I needed to solve upon joining the company.
More importantly, my discovery of the cold start problem was rooted in the product itself. Kinoo was a private video conferencing solution with embedded co-play of learning activities for remote grandparents and other loved ones in families with young children. Although it was a novel solution at the heel of the pandemic as families suffered from prolonged isolation during COVID-19 lockdowns, the product was still dependent upon clear atomic units to kickstart and grow a network.
When I examined the customer journey with the Kinoo team, we all agreed that an out-of-the-box experience that engages the child from the beginning was necessary for the product to take off. Hence, came the concept of the Kinoo Magic Wand.
Community is the Foundation of Branding
In the old days, when a brand launched a product, it put it in stores and advertised it in print, on radio and TV. Now, none of the above may work well without the seeding, nurturing, and activating a solid community of the brand’s own followers, enthusiasts, and influencers. And this doesn’t come easy because it has to be a two-way street, meaning, that it’s not just the brand pushing out content, but having user-generated content to amplify the brand.
It comes down to why people care. What makes people do what a brand wants them to do?
At the beginning of August 2022, we launched our #kinoomagicwand social campaign with a simple landing page without any information about the product (mostly because we hadn’t defined the functionality or the content at that point, but time was of the essence to get word out and a community started). Families from all over the country started to post stories and reels of their children creating imaginary magic, tagging us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Such content got shared and the word of the Kinoo Magic Wand spread organically amongst families with preschoolers.
Storytelling as a Marketer
Throughout my high-tech career in Silicon Valley, telling stories of new products even before they’ve been fully developed has been both challenging and thrilling.
Here are three examples of my work:
Touchjet WAVE — Turn any TV into a Giant Touchscreen, August, 2015
DMAI Animal Island Learning Adventure (AILA) Sit & Play — A Child’s Firsts March, 2020
The Kinoo Magic Wand | Magic of Movement, September 2022
From the ideation of the product, to the conception of the spot, from the scripting, to the onsite shooting, from post production, to release, I went on this journey with a creative team of young diversified copywriters and filmmakers, and I couldn’t be more proud of them and the result. We told an emotional story which resonated with our audience.
Brands Alike
In the fast-paced journey at Kinoo these past five months, I had the privilege to visit Highlights for Children, a 75-year-old American brand icon, and together we created the Kinoo Special Edition of High Five magazine.
I still cannot believe it’s been just five months since we embarked on this new product. To envision something magical and build it from ground up and attract a strategic partner like Highlights is highly rewarding. By sharing my story, I hope to start conversations with great minds alike on Medium, and grow our community as entrepreneurs, thought leaders and writers.
