Have you ever found yourself constantly checking your brand’s social media, hoping to see your latest launch take off? Or maybe you’ve seen a product launch so perfectly executed that it seems like everyone in your feed is talking about it?
A strong product launch campaign does more than drive immediate sales. It builds brand equity, attracts new shoppers, deepens connections with existing fans and solidifies a brand’s position in the market. The question is: What makes a product launch stand out?
The first step is understanding the five Voices that shape a customer’s journey: Celebrities, Influencers, Media, Owned Media and Partners. By leveraging the right mix of Voices, brands can amplify their launch campaigns and drive real impact. Media Impact Value® (MIV®), Launchmetrics’ proprietary metric that assigns a monetary value to media placements across social, online and print, helps you understand which Voices are helping amplify your message and drive measurable results.
In this blog, we’ll break down five recent launches that captured consumer interest, sparked conversations across social media and generated measurable impact. By analyzing their strategies, we will uncover what it takes to craft a launch that truly resonates—and that people can’t stop talking about.
5 Brands and Their Successful Product Launches:
Rhode’s Viral Lip Phone Case
In February 2024, Rhode finally answered the question fans had been asking for months: Would Hailey Bieber’s brand release a phone case to match its best-selling Peptide Lip Treatment? The answer was yes, and the demand was immediate.
For months, Hailey subtly teased the product, casually featuring it in mirror selfies and l framing it like a personal accessory rather than an upcoming launch. Without official confirmation, the anticipation built up, until Rhode finally announced the Lip Case. Within hours, over 200,000 people joined the waitlist, showing just how powerful the Voice of Hailey Bieber can be.
At its core, the Lip Case was a very simple yet genius idea: a phone case with an attached space for Rhode’s lip balm. But its success wasn’t just about its practicality. Hailey’s organic posts turned Rhode’s simple, everyday item into a must-have.
Lauren Ratner, Rhode’s president explained in an interview with Vogue: “Everyone has their phone on them all the time and everyone has their Peptide Lip Treatment. So, why not combine the two?” The simplicity of the concept made it feel obvious, so obvious in fact, that consumers wondered why no one had thought of it before. This, combined with Rhode’s minimalist branding, made the Lip Case viral on social media.
The launch was equally strategic. Bieber was “spotted” using the case at the Super Bowl, an event where brands are willing to pay millions for a few seconds of airtime. Rhode then posted a clip on Instagram with the caption “mid-game touch up.” The timing was perfect, millions were watching and Rhode made sure to capitalize on the moment, generating $101K in MIV from the Reel alone. By the time it officially launched, the case sold out instantly.
TikTok also exploded with reactions, including a viral post (85,000 likes) joking about buying a new iPhone just to be able to use the case (that was only available for iPhone 14 and 15.) Rhode’s team knew exactly what they were doing: by letting the anticipation build naturally, they transformed a simple yet functional product into something both aspirational and essential.
Miu Miu x New Balance 530
New Balance has long had a reputation for making shoes that, as their 2019 slogan put it, are “worn by supermodels in London and dads in Ohio.” That contrast became the core of its ongoing partnership with Miu Miu. During their collaboration in 2023, both brands reworked the 547 silhouette, generating $1.3M in Media Impact Value® (MIV®), with $1.2M coming from social media alone.
In February 2024, they took things in a different direction, bringing back the unexpected New Balance 530 from the early 90s, a sneaker often overlooked in collaborations by more hyped styles such as the 990 and 2002R. By reintroducing this style with Miu Miu’s high-fashion approach (using distressed suede and lightweight mesh) the collaboration made something familiar feel fresh again while also tapping into consumer nostalgia.
Selling at $1,120 per pair, the sneakers were positioned as exclusive, collectible items. Limited availability only fuelled demand, with pre-orders selling out within minutes of restocks being announced. On social media, the collaboration impact was immediate. Chiara Ferragni, one of the biggest fashion influencers, posted a close-up of the shoes in her feed, helping to position the shoes as fashion-forward. Street style photographers also captured the sneakers on the feet of influencers during fashion week, making the hashtag #MiuMiuNewBalance rack up thousands of mentions.
What made the Miu Miu x New Balance 530 so successful? Rather than relying on a traditional marketing campaign, the brands let the fashion community do the work—the sneakers were worn and talked about in real-time. This approach reinforced their exclusivity, making them feel like a fashion secret rather than a mass-market drop.
Beyoncé’s Cécred Haircare
Beyoncé’s Cécred wasn’t born as another celebrity-backed beauty line. Instead, it positioned itself as a legacy-driven, science-rooted hair care brand, blending personal history, expert credibility and cultural significance into their campaign launch. Because of this, the Cécred debut in 2024 generated $18.9M in MIV, proving the power of a launch strategy fueled by storytelling.
During the brand’s introduction in February 2024, Cécred set the tone with an intimate and personal teaser video featuring footage from Tina Knowles-Lawson’s Houston salon, where Beyoncé grew up immersed in the world of hairstyling. The campaign’s message “Hair is sacred,” solidified Cécred’s deeper purpose: elevating haircare beyond beauty and into the realm of heritage and self-expression.
Rather than relying only on Beyoncé as the face of the brand, Cécred’s team crafted an influencer strategy centered around hair professionals and stylists. These were people who not only had industry authority but also had strong influence online. Cécred partnered with textured hair specialists, salon owners and beauty influencers known for their expertise in hair health, ensuring the brand was introduced through trusted voices in the haircare community. By leveraging stylists with strong followings on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Cécred ensured that the product was explained, tested and validated by those who specialize in hair health.
One example is a TikTok by hair stylist, Sharon SimplyInsane, where she performed a hair transformation and spoke about the common challenge of not knowing which products to use for curly hair, before discussing Cécred. This post alone generated $96K in MIV.
This strategy made Cécred’s launch feel authentic and result-driven. Experts also broke down the science behind its bioactive keratin technology, showcasing its effectiveness across different hair types. This resulted in a campaign that built trust and credibility among beauty consumers. By letting professionals take the lead, Cécred’s team ensured its force would extend beyond Beyoncé's personal influence, establishing the brand as a true player in the luxury beauty space.
Gap x Palace
After generating $3M in MIV within just two weeks, Gap’s collaboration with Palace can be considered as one of the best launches of 2024. This partnership marked a smart move for Gap, blending its 90s legacy with the credibility of streetwear culture to strengthen the brand’s relevance in modern fashion conversation. Unlike previous collaborations with Wicked or Star Wars, which had broader commercial appeal, Gap’s collaboration with Palace focused on a niche audience: a younger and style-conscious consumer base.
The launch strategy prioritized exclusivity, organic hype and focused on community storytelling. Palace, known for its limited-edition drops and cult-like following, brought an audience of streetwear enthusiasts into the picture. The most talked about piece of the collection was the reworked, classic Gap hoodie, with the logo flipped-“PAL” on the front and “GAP” on the back, symbolizing the blending of two distinct, but very complementary brand identities. Palace co-founder Lev Tanju, described the collaboration as a way to reintroduce Gap to a new generation of skaters and streetwear fans, making the launch feel like an authentic revival rather than just a play for clicks and relevance.
Given the campaign’s focus on streetwear communities, it made sense that the top placement came from Gap’s Owned Voice, generating $57K in MIV from a single Instagram Reel. The campaign was built on authenticity, allowing Gap to speak directly to its audience, rather than heavy-handed marketing. The Reel captured the essence of the collection, with film imagery that showcased the effortless and everyday appeal of the collaboration. This content proved to resonate with both Gap's and Palace's following.
By prioritizing owned media and placements that spoke directly to the fanbase, Gap successfully reclaimed its place in the fashion conversation. The launch reaffirmed Gap’s cultural relevance, proving that the brand still has the ability to tap into youth-driven movements, while staying true to its heritage.
Dyson’s Airstrait Straightener
Dyson made its name with smart, high-performance engineering—and the Airstrait brings that same innovation to beauty. Designed to straighten hair without hot plates, it introduced a completely new way of heat styling. Dyson strategically positioned the launch as a breakthrough in haircare technology—appealing both to loyal brand fans who are already aware of Dyson’s strong technology roots and to new consumers drawn by the innovation itself.
Priced at $449.99, the Airstrait entered the market as a premium investment piece, aligning with Dyson’s existing product line. By emphasizing the technological innovations of the product through their Owned and Influencer Voices, Dyson justified the price point making it feel like an upgrade shoppers needed. The launch was perfectly timed, capitalizing on the brand’s existing momentum in the beauty industry. Following the massive success of the Airwrap, which generated over 5.4 billion views on TikTok, Dyson ensured that the Airstrait would follow a similar trajectory. Rather than starting from scratch, the brand leveraged an audience that already knew the brand’s ethos to fuel demand.
A key driver of success was Dyson’s influencer strategy. The brand seeded the Airstrait to top beauty influencers and hairstylists who already used and loved other products of the brand, allowing them to test it before its official release. This ensured that trusted Voices in the beauty community validated its effectiveness, turning it into a must-have item. The top post came from Dyson’s Global Styling Ambassador, Irinel De Leon, who tested the Airstrait in a Reel, generating $65K in MIV from just that one post.
The response was immediate. The Airstrait Straightener sold out instantly and just one week after launch, the campaign had already generated $3.47M in MIV, proving that Dyson’s approach of combining technology that speaks for itself with expert-driven voices was once again a winning formula. With this launch, Dyson reinforced its status as an industry leader in beauty and technology, while driving both social conversations and real sales impact.
The key to these winning product launch campaigns
The success of these launches was the result of precise strategy and expert execution. Each brand leveraged a distinct approach but they all ensured they engaged their consumers in ways that contributed to larger business goals. The common thread between all of them? Targeted and intentional brand positioning backed by data.
Want to refine your product launch strategy?
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