You want press? Do it on a Monday!
You've got a sexy new product! You want buzz! You want journalists covering it when they're well-rested and not working overtime on a weekend!
You want all of the above? Well here's what you do: You kick it off on a Monday. Not a Saturday.
Everyone expects Apple to announce some cool new things today at the kickoff to their Worldwide Developers Conference. The Twitter is already buzzing about #WWDC! People are Facebooking it! My grandma is calling me up every 8 minutes wondering what Apple's gonna do next! (Okay, that part's not true.)
It's the first day of the work week and all across the land, right at this very moment, people are rolling into work with their thermal coffee mugs, unplugging their ears from their iPod Touches, and firing up their desktop PC in their cubicle. They're wondering -- that is, if they have any room left in their household budget -- can I afford a new, better, slicker iPhone if Apple debuts one today?
Tech journalists across the land are also rolling into work right about now -- and they've got blogs to fill, updates to post, Tweets to Tweet. It's Monday, after all -- the beginning of the work week, and potential big new news from Apple could carry us (ahem, them) for at least a day or two of blog posts and news updates.
My point: Palm Pre launched on a Saturday, and sure, it got decent coverage. But most journalists don't work on Saturdays (I don't, usually). Apple, on the other hand, is kicking off their WWDC event today. If they launch a new iPhone (big rumor), they'll get HUGE coverage, with legions of tech reporters and bloggers across the land clickety-clacking away on their keyboards all day and night.
Just an observation from a guy in the trenches.
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Comments
I've heard the worst possible day to launch a new product is on a Friday.
Yes, that makes sense. Consumers will get their hands on the product as soon as they can. But if you want people to write about it -- reporters, bloggers, etc. -- you gotta be on their schedule. -gs
Posted by: Paul | June 8, 2009 11:22 AM
Great point Gus. Echoing Paul's thoughts above, I also steer clear of new campaigns on Fridays - especially for B2B firms.
Generally speaking we've always thought that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were the best days, with the argument against Monday being that journalists were mapping out their week, digging out of an email overflow from the weekend, etc. Perhaps your idea here trumps that notion.
Posted by: Jon Payne | June 8, 2009 12:43 PM