I am currently working on a campaign for a client and we are in the midst of planning a campaign launch.  Going over all of the items our team has considered for making the event a successful one led to me this post about what every new launch needs to be successful in web 2.0.

Now in the old days, a launch really needed just some media and advertising and the rest would usually take care of itself.  Today however more people are wary of what they see in the media and look to colleagues and friends for advice.  These days the truly  marketing savvy company would include an online strategy to bolster the momentum of a product launch.

This does not mean though that the company buys advertising online, and in fact is quite the opposite.  A company needs to create and distribute tools for their followers to help pass the word along and generate excitement about the new product.  This can be done ahead of time to build excitement, both through online and traditional media, and needs to consider what the follower would be excited enough to tell their tribe about INSTEAD of what the company wants them to push.

Whether or not businesses realize, they are now no longer in complete control of their message.  This has been the case before with traditional media, but the number of players and their effective role was limited enough so that a company could reasonably dictate what a message was in most instances.  Now the paradigm has shifted, and the followers are the ones dictating the message.  Because there are so many people online creating messages, companies are really at the whim of what the people are saying.

For example, a recent Facebook trend has been the “Can this Pickle get more fans than Nickleback?” page.  Now I am sure that the parent company of the music group is none too pleased that this page is taking off the way it is, but what can they really do?  The momentum has been building, and its very possible that the group will eventually have more friends than Nickleback.  The thing that should also scare business owners is that the page itself was created on 2/3, so in 6 days they have registered over450K fans.  Viral sh!t-talking is something every company needs to be aware of.

So what are tools that companies could utilize?  The same online options, including the Dark Horse Communications Top 10 Tools, with relevant information is a good start, but the underlying key is that they be portable.  Followers need to be able to quickly and easily move along your message across a variety of platforms, whether its Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc.  Calls to action for the followers is also good, but even better when asking them to create their own recommendation content for your behalf.