Product Launch: Creating Mental Models and Building Habits

Launching a product is similar to launching a rocket—you have to break the tremendous inertia that is holding a body at rest. Getting a product to be noticed in the cluttered and clamorous marketplace takes a coordinated effort among sales, marketing, and distribution. If it’s a consumer product, launches might involve millions in advertising and heavy promotional spending. Business products typically launch with less fanfare, but instead have large-scale efforts directed at direct sales and customer education.

Successful launches grab the attention of the executive mind. Companies not only want their new products noticed; they also want potential customers to go through as much of the purchase process as possible—from awareness through evaluation and interest, all the way to trial. Although the launch process is focused on executive processes, success comes from positioning new product offerings globally to the habitual mind.

When companies talk about launching a new product, they can mean anything from a revolutionary new idea to a simple modification of a product they have been making for years. The rarest of “new” products are just that—new to the world, never before seen. When Dean Kamen introduced the Segway in 2001, it was truly a new-to-the-world invention. Less dramatic, but often just as challenging, is the product development that others offer but is new to the company. The decision to pursue these products can be reactive in response to a competitor or proactive in pursuit of market opportunities.

Less radical but still challenging is bringing out new products based on existing products, such as product line extensions. And at the low end of the innovation spectrum is “new and improved,” in which a company is simply updating an existing product. Yet any change to an established product carries a profound risk—that changes will interrupt customers’ habitual purchase behavior. The launch of New Coke is a cautionary tale to all brand managers.

These distinctions are important at the launch phase because we need to understand our customers’ existing mental models for a product and a product category. Mental models are largely formed unconsciously and relate to two sets of neurons in the PFC: one that creates categories and one that creates rules. Positioning a product creates a type of mental map inside the customer’s mind. The more richly a product connects to existing associations and emotions, the stronger the brand identification. Launching a new product becomes a balancing act between using customers’ existing mental models so they can understand where to place a new product and simultaneously focusing on some level of differentiation.

The more “new” a product is, the more work must be done at the front end to create or modify a category in the brain to begin the habit-forming process. Commercialization for the Segway was difficult because it didn’t compare to anything else. Conversely, the more a company’s “new” product is perceived to be similar to existing products, the less it will stand out at launch. New products can also be positioned by what they are not.

The Baby Boom generation grew up in the back of station wagons and were damned if they were going to drive them as adults. When Chrysler introduced the minivan in 1983, it provided the utility of the station wagon without the 1960s baggage. The Dodge Caravan was an instant hit, spawning a host of imitators. The minivan was the anti–station wagon.

However, a lot of fathers didn’t want to be seen driving a minivan, which was tagged as the soccer mom vehicle. The SUV filled the resulting market opportunity. The SUV was the anti-minivan. In the world of male and female asymmetries, it’s worth noting that the female brain experienced little, if any, reluctance to driving the beefiest SUVs Detroit puts out.

In marketing’s relentless pursuit of new opportunities, most SUVs never left the road, paving the way for yet another alternative to the station wagon—the crossover. A cross between a car and an SUV, the new category is so nebulous that some manufacturers put them on car chassis and others use a pickup truck platform. Although crossovers have not seen the success of either minivans or SUVs, the green revolution might position these smaller vehicles in the consumer’s mind as the right mix of size and gas economy.

Although the station wagon never went away, it largely faded from sight until the Dodge Magnum arrived in 2005. Combining the looks of a muscle car with slightly futuristic lines, this wagon was a hit with urban trendsetters and was even used in the science fiction move The Island. It’s doubtful that the Magnum will create a new trend for station wagons, but it does show how playing off existing mental models creates endless market opportunities.

The successful launch of each subsequent generation of family vehicle was predicated on making a connection to preexisting models in the minds of customers. These mental models are both conscious and unconscious, tagged by emotions and retrieved by hundreds of cues in the environment.

The more unique a new product is to the market, the more money and time a company will need to spend building customers’ mental models. But even modifications of existing products need to be positioned. Tremendous pressure exists to focus launches on either hype or dry appeals to the executive mind. However, neither approach will likely create the kind of mental models necessary to start a potential customer on the path of purchase and eventual habitual use.

Preparing for a new product to win the executive and habitual minds requires a more nuanced approach using narratives and metaphors. Through stories and analogies, new products can quickly stake a claim on the internal mental representations that will rapidly lead to behavioral changes.

Narratives can be highly effective by placing a new product in the context of a story. For example, when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight, you should use FedEx. One of the immutable laws of the universe is that a task will expand to the time allotted it. The people at FedEx give us one more day to get things done, and the company’s ads have consistently told this story.

A less effective narrative used in 2007 has Dr. Robert Jarvik explaining how he switched majors from architecture to medicine after his father had a heart attack. This led him to develop the first permanent artificial heart, which somehow makes him a credible spokesperson for Pfizer Pharmaceutical’s cholesterol-lowering Lipitor. The narrative is good; unfortunately, it doesn’t explain the product—just the spokesperson. (In 2008, Pfizer pulled the ads after they came under review by Congress.)

Narratives are useful because they provide a context, a way for customers to understand how a new product fits into the scheme of things. Stories are effective because they appeal powerfully to the way we understand the world. A story that involves us in how or why a new product comes to the marketplace can connect on multiple levels to both the executive and habitual minds.

Similarly, metaphors are valuable tools for complex products and services that involve intangibles. It’s hard to explain the benefits of an insurance policy, but you can “Get a piece of the rock” with Prudential and “You’re in good hands with Allstate.” Metaphors are often overused when a company has difficulty articulating a product’s value proposition.

At launch, metaphors can serve an essential role in helping a new product gain a foothold in a customer’s mind. Consumers are aware of thousands of brands, making it difficult for a new brand to make an impression. A metaphor can link a product to existing positive feelings. However, if customers don’t make the link, or if the product doesn’t actually embody the attributes of the metaphor, the launch will fall flat. Insurance companies use geckos, whales, Snoopy, and stags in addition to good hands and the Rock of Gibraltar. But metaphors are successful only if they can connect the essence of the company to a specific trait.

Harry West of Continuum makes the point that when a good metaphor presents itself, it can do a great job of quickly explaining an idea. “But sometimes metaphors really get in the way. Don’t waste a lot of time trying to create a metaphor. If there isn’t a good one, don’t try to force it.”

The stakes at launch can be huge, the culmination of millions or even billions in R&D and production costs. AT&T and Verizon, the two largest U.S. phone companies, are in a protracted launch of advanced video services. To take customers away from the entrenched cable providers, the phone companies have spent billions upgrading their networks. However, because their network build-outs are progressing neighborhood by neighborhood, the companies cannot mount a nationwide advertising campaign. Further complicating matters, the companies have deployed different technologies.

Although executives think an ideal competitive situation is not having any, competitors are normally required to make a market. In extraordinarily rare circumstances, a single company educates the marketplace about new product categories. To justify their monumental investment, the phone companies have to offer something more than simply a third video-delivery platform.

Few things in the world are more habitual than watching television. The average American watches more than four hours a day. The remote control might as well be grafted to our hands. To succeed, Verizon and AT&T must take advantage of existing habits by providing a service that behaves similarly to cable. The real challenge is changing customers’ category neurons so that they equate cool video services with companies historically associated with boring voice services.

Launch represents a critical time in the life of a product. Undoing a bad first impression is very difficult. Although it’s important to create anticipation and excitement to overcome customers’ indifference, the earliest messages set the stage for how the product is positioned and ultimately used.

Product managers need to focus not only on developing mental models, but also identifying what behaviors a customer must go through to arrive at purchase. However, the end goal is to introduce the product in such a way that it leads to long-term habitual use—think relationship instead of transaction. Although it’s important to build anticipation and excitement to overcome the inertia of indifference with which customers typically view new products, do not sacrifice a long-term relationship for a quick sale.

Make sure you know the answers to these questions before launching a new product or service: