stealth, launchRecently ran across an international business that is planning a massive parallel stealth launch in the US; in fact, I’ll be amazed if their able to launch in stealth given the scale of what it appears they’re planning.
Normally, I don’t think very highly of stealth startups, and in fact, the company above is not a startup, but clearly there are real world examples of stealth startup launches that in fact played out in a way that worked in the end.
What is the most successful stealth launch in history?
By the “most successful” stealth launch in history, the measure would be the internal rate of return for the first 12 months following the launch - and that the facts supporting the claims made must come from a notable source.
Stealth launches is hard to define. You can have a company operating in stealth mode on a product with little public information (Apple electric car, Segway) and then have a very public announcement when the product is ready. And you can have a stealth launch like how in 2002 Sony Ericsson released its camera phone by just having a group of their personnel show up in public places with camera phones asking passer bys to take pics with the phones and explaining the feature. The latter counts more on the uniqueness of the product that it would make people talk about it on their own and have a sort of viral launch campaign.
Sometimes stealth do not work out as they are intended. I think the biggest failure in recent history would be the Segway. The little cryptic information the public received was over hyped and created over expectations which the product failed to meet leading to a lot of disappointment from the onset.
Since return rates on campaigns are rarely published, it maybe be difficult to give an exact comparisons unless it was someone closely involved in it.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.