Product Launch Video
one launch date, a coordinated suite of assets

Start from the launch date and work backward: final lock at minimum 48 hours prior (to allow platform-specific QA and last-minute legal review), first full cut at 5-7 business days prior, all raw footage and product access secured 2-3 weeks prior. Treat this as a hard critical path — a launch date rarely moves, but video production timelines are exactly what gets compressed when a launch slips, and compressed timelines are where quality and accuracy checks get skipped.

Confirm early whether the product being shown will actually match what ships — a common and costly failure is producing a video against a beta build that changes before launch, forcing a re-shoot or re-record of screen capture under time pressure.

The hero video (60-120 seconds) should follow problem, solution, proof, call to action — in that order — and should be watchable by someone with zero prior context about the product. Avoid opening with company history or mission statement; open on the specific problem the launch solves, ideally framed the way a prospective customer would describe it themselves.

Include one specific, concrete proof point (a number, a before/after, a named capability) rather than only adjectives like 'powerful' or 'seamless' — vague claims in launch videos are consistently the first thing viewers tune out on, and they add no substance for anyone deciding whether to act.

Teaser cutdowns (3-5, at 15-30 seconds) are built for the pre-launch window and should tease the problem without revealing the full solution, driving to a landing page or waitlist. Launch-day shorts (6-10, at 20-60 seconds) each isolate one specific feature or use case from the hero video rather than compressing the whole hero video into a shorter version — a common mistake that produces a rushed, incoherent short.

Stagger launch-day shorts across 2-3 weeks post-launch rather than posting them all on day one; this extends visibility past the single-day algorithmic spike that most launch content gets and gives the launch a longer effective lifespan across channels.

Cross-check every on-screen text claim and every spoken feature description against what is actually shipping at launch — not the roadmap version, not the internal demo version. This is the single highest-risk QA item for launch videos specifically, because the cost of publishing an inaccurate claim about a live product is reputational and sometimes contractual.

Confirm screen recordings reflect the current UI, since interface changes between recording and launch are common in fast-moving product teams and a visibly outdated UI undermines the credibility of the whole asset on release day.

Four weeks out, write a one-page brief answering: what specific problem does this solve, for whom, and what's the single proof point. Book product access and any spokesperson recording for three weeks out, treating this like a hard deadline since it's the input everything else depends on. Build the shot list around the actual demo flow rather than a generic template — screen-record the real feature working end to end before any polishing.

Two weeks out, cut a rough hero video and share it internally for factual accuracy review before any visual polish — catching a wrong claim in a rough cut costs minutes; catching it in a polished final costs a full re-edit cycle. One week out, cut the launch-day shorts from the same footage, each isolating one feature, and schedule them to stagger over the two weeks following launch rather than all on day one.

Starting production the week of launch, which leaves no buffer for a re-shoot if the product changes or a stakeholder flags an inaccurate claim late. Producing only one asset (the hero video) and treating cutdowns as an afterthought, which wastes the footage's actual reach potential and leaves the launch dependent on a single video's single-day performance.

Compressing the hero video into short-form cuts instead of building short-form content around individual features — a 90-second video crammed into 20 seconds usually just feels rushed rather than punchy. And skipping the pre-lock accuracy review under time pressure, which is exactly how launch videos end up publicly describing a feature that doesn't match what actually shipped.