There Is No Such Thing As A Great Launch Event

If you woke up this morning wondering why Samsung is being berated on social media less than 24 hours after announcing its latest flagship phone, might I point you here and here, where you can read of the magical night at Radio City Music Hall when Samsung paid Broadway actors to play out scenes using the new phone for two hours. In a word, it was surreal. But that seems to be the norm these days with CE launches. I can’t think of a single product launch that has left me thinking: “what a great product.” Instead I’m left thinking about how long and torturous the presentation was. Tolerating the presentation long enough to begin loving the product has become a growing obstacle for the tech press, and it’s something marketers are trying desperately to solve. HTC and BlackBerry annoy us because they bring exec after exec on-stage for hours to demo a phone whose features we could understand in about 20 minutes, sometimes electing celebrities to do their bidding. We’re annoyed with Qualcomm at CES for going way off the hinges trying to make mobile processors look like the priority of every teenager’s life. Sony, I can’t even talk about, after they made us sit through two full hours of game demos without ever letting us see the next PlayStation. Who’s idea was that? Seriously? With Samsung’s presentation last night, the company managed to roll all of the worst gimmicks in product announcements into one, long, wacky show. Even the Galaxy S 4, Samsung’s beast and the latest generation of the top-selling Galaxy S line, couldn’t make it through the announcement phase without looking like a tween being dropped off at school by over-protective, off-their-rocker parents. Has there ever been a good product launch? Has a company ever found a way to make the device loveable, important, and must-have without letting their marketing spunk dirty up the whole show? And if so, what does it look like, this flawless CE debut? I can only think of one product launch that left myself, and the tech press, with a good taste in their mouth. It will enrage the flame-throwing phandroids, but the truth often does, so oh well. Apple’s announcement of the iPhone, and maybe the iPad, was the first and possibly only time that a product has overshadowed the event. This is not a hat-tip to Apple’s marketing, who

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