Launch Comms & PR Plan
Shape the story for a launch and prepare for the hard questions.
A messaging plan, the headline you want, and the crisis answers ready.
Launch comms get written by people who love the product, for people who do not care yet — and the gap is where announcements die. The PR & Comms Lead builds the message house, the Storyteller finds the arc a journalist can retell, and Barack Obama’s seat brings the discipline of saying one thing clearly to people predisposed to hear something else. The Crisis Comms Advisor reads every line for the bad-faith interpretation it will meet on social media, the Brand Strategist keeps the announcement consistent with what the brand has promised before, and the Risk Officer prepares for the question you hope nobody asks.
Help us shape the communications for a launch or announcement, and stress-test the narrative. THE ANNOUNCEMENT: [what you are launching/announcing, and why now] AUDIENCE: [who needs to hear it — customers, press, investors, staff] THE GOAL: [what should change in people's minds or actions] Debate: 1. The core message — the one thing people should remember. 2. The story arc — does it have a protagonist, a tension and a payoff, or is it a feature list. 3. The headline a journalist would actually write. 4. The hard questions and the bad-faith reading — what could go wrong out of context. 5. Channel and timing — who hears it first, and how it sequences. 6. The crisis scenario we have not prepared for. FINAL SYNTHESIS: - A tight messaging plan: core message, three supporting points, the proof. - The headline we want versus the headline we fear, and how to close the gap. - A short Q&A for the toughest questions, answered honestly.
An illustrative excerpt for a hypothetical brief of this type: A meal-delivery startup is announcing a switch to fully recyclable packaging alongside a small price increase, and the draft press release leads with the company’s sustainability journey. Every real run is generated fresh from your specifics, debated across rounds, and audited before the verdict.
The draft buries the news under the journey. A journalist reads the first sentence and asks: what happened? Two things happened — greener packaging, higher prices — and the release mentions the second in paragraph six, which reads as hiding it. Lead with both, honestly coupled: the price pays for the packaging. Hidden trade-offs become the story; owned trade-offs end it.
Read it in bad faith, because the internet will: “greenwashing to justify a price hike” writes itself, and paragraph six is the screenshot. The pre-emptive move is specificity — what exactly changes in the packaging, verified how, costing what. Vague virtue plus a price rise is indefensible; a specific bill of materials plus a price rise is just honest economics.
One message, plainly: you are asking customers to pay a little more for something many of them already wanted. Say that — to them, before the press. The sequencing matters more than the wording: customers who hear it from the news after paying for it feel managed. Email them first, let the release confirm what your own people already know.
The unprepared question is the competitor comparison: “rivals did this without raising prices — why can’t you?” Whoever fronts this needs the honest answer rehearsed, with the real cost difference if it exists. And prepare the churn scenario: if a visible fraction of customers publicly cancel over the increase, who says what, where? Write that Q&A now, not that morning.
Prefer drop-and-go? Use the Launch Comms & PR Plan tool — team pre-seated, included with Plus.
What does the council need — a finished draft or just the plan?
Either. With a draft, the critique is line-level: the buried lede, the sentence that becomes the hostile screenshot. With just the announcement facts, the output is the message house — core message, three supporting points, proof — plus the sequencing plan for who hears it first.
Is this useful for small announcements, or only big launches?
The stakes decide, not the size: a pricing change to loyal customers is a small announcement with real blast radius. The Crisis Comms seat earns its keep on exactly the routine-looking announcements that carry an unexamined trade-off — which is what most “small” news turns out to be.
What is the “headline we fear” exercise in the deliverable?
The synthesis names the headline you want and the headline a sceptical journalist would write instead, then works on closing the gap — usually with specificity, sequencing or an owned admission. If the feared headline cannot be closed, the honest recommendation may be to change the announcement, not the wording.