When you’re launching a new brand, product or promotion, there are at least ten things you need to get right.

Stuff up one of the ten and you could destroy all the effort you put into the other nine. Worse still, you could do more damage than good. Yet it’s surprising how often marketing teams miss some of the essential elements of a successful launch.

Damian Pincus is a Creative Partner and founder at The Works – an agency that has done its fair share of launching new products into the Australian market. In this episode of BTalk he talks through ten elements you need to consider:

• Ruthlessly understand you audience
• Be highly targeted
• Be realistic about your budget
• The creative has to stand out — take some risks
• Avoid using work from overseas — Australianise the brand or product
• Find a great insight and own it
• Focus on the brand language that is unique to your company or product
• Don’t let consumers tell you what your brand is all about
• Make people trust you

For most marketers this will all be common sense. Yet the best intentions can be watered down by internal politics. I reckon this is a useful checklist. As your launch strategy goes through various internal iterations is it losing its impact and failing to meet some of these key requirements?

First published on CBS News