The March, 2011 launch of Spirent Communication's VR5 Wireless Channel Emulator serves as one good example of an effective product launch. A channel emulator (aka a fader or fading emulator) mimics the RF environment so that radio receivers (as in cell phones) can be tested. It artificially replicates the reflections of radio waves from terrain, buildings, vehicles, etc., but unlike live testing, the radio environment can be accurately repeated from one test to the next. The VR5 served a B2B market that included wireless network operators, wireless network equipment manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers.My employer already owned a good chunk of that market, but our most significant legacy competitor was getting very aggressive. At this time I had already (accurately, as it turned out) discerned that this competitor was looking to sell its fader business and was therefore focused on top-line growth. We also had a new competitor, a start-up that was looking to take our share as a means to sell the company and was therefore extremely aggressive.By creating and managing a very well-defined messaging strategy, we were able to blitz a targeted segment of the industry with information on launch day (March 15, 2011). There were, of course, several hurdles I had to overcome:Our nominal media advertising budget was $0. This had been the case for years but I'd built good enough relationships with the media (mainly by consistently delivering high-quality, interesting content ahead of deadlines) that we had free rein to publish without having to spend on print/web ads. We did shake a few dollars loose for web banner ads for this launch.After media commitments had already been made to deliver content in October of 2010, the release date slipped. We managed to meet the October commitments with different media (we needed to keep the launch quiet) and still secure placements for March of 2011, including the release of a related article in the daily magazine handed out at a major trade show.I targeted the industry's two most relevant major awards to be given to the VR5. This was a near-impossibility because when the awards were being decided, Spirent did not yet have a working prototype. Through a lot of hard work, I secured both these awards (LTE Visionary Award and Best in Test award) for the product. I even managed to have both editors shade the award announcement date so that the awards would not predate the public release of the product.

Anything I could write here represents a small fraction of the cross-functional effort involved. Through the judicious use of press releases, web seminars, technical white papers for our engineering audience, trade show involvement, etc. the VR5 launch such a success that the backlog for the product lasted over a year. Spirent's then-CEO, Bill Burns, called it our, most effective product launch ever and a model for the way things should be done.Some of the launch's effectiveness were also due to changes I'd made to our press release function (for years prior to this, we did a lot of press releases that had no effect) and trade show function (so that we focused our attention on potential customers rather than the multitude of trade show attendees).I'd also point out that all of this was a few years ago. In 2013 I took a corporate role that made use of my strategic business talents, specifically in the areas of executive business intelligence and deal valuation. This gave even better strategic insights than I had when we launched the VR5.As long-winded as this is, it really only scratches the surface of the launch and of my productivity. I'd be very interested in discussing further.