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In the world of product announcements, everyone likes to point to Apple to show how it’s done. The videos they make to show off their latest thing, whether it’s a new Macbook or some new iOS feature, are as beautiful as the products themselves.
But if you’re reading this, you probably don’t have the kind of budget, brand equity, or talent that Apple has.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a big splash with a product launch video you can upload, embed, and share far and wide.
To help you learn how, we sought the expertise of product launch expert Robleh Jama. Here’s his advice for making sure your next product- or feature-launch video sticks the landing.
The best product launch videos: Types and examples
“The main goal of any product launch video is to get people excited and get them to take action. Whatever your call to action is—whether it’s ‘Download’, ‘Book a demo’, ‘Buy now’ or ‘Sign up’—you want the video to drive people to take the next step.”
— Robleh Jama, serial product builder
The CEO of Boom Vision Company and former Director of Product at Shopify, Robleh has a ton of successful product launches under his belt, including chart-topping apps like NextKeyboard and Shop.
The best product launch videos might differ in format and industry, but like Robleh says, they all succeed at transferring enthusiasm from the product maker to the product consumer.
1. Founder-led product updates
Many bootstrapped founders and independent makers have turned being small into a strength by using video as a direct line to customers for broadcasting product updates.
“I’ve noticed a trend in founders and CEOs using simple, direct videos—often recorded on their phones—to explain the ‘why’ behind their products. Even big names like (Mark) Zuckerberg are doing this,” says Robleh.
By taking a front-facing role in their marketing, they’re able to do what a faceless logo can’t, with product launches that feel more like a vlog than a press release.
Adam Mosseri is the Head of Instagram, a huge company, but he announces new features in the app with videos shot on his phone with minimal post-production and posted on his personal profile.
These simple video updates:
- Don’t require a team or a lot of time to produce
- Build momentum with more frequent announcements to tell the larger story of a product that’s constantly improving
- Make the audience feel like their feedback is being heard at the highest levels
2. Product overview — physical products
It can be hard to get customers hyped about a physical product when they can’t touch or try it out through a screen, especially in categories like apparel and furniture.
That’s where an overview video can close the gap. They make the visuals and bullet points you might find on a product page come alive through video, outlining value props, handling objections, and simulating what it’d be like to own your product before they even visit your site.
Take this video where footwear brand Vessi announces its new line of Sunday Slippers.
In under a minute, this product overview video manages to include:
- Features like “100% waterproof” in action with short text overlays
- Styling inspiration on male and female models in indoor and outdoor settings
- Close-up product shots of different colors from various angles
3. Real-time demo — software products
With a bit of editing, a simple screen recording can be turned into a short demo to announce new software products and features.
For business software in particular, a product demo can be more than a launch campaign asset—it can be a self-serve alternative to hopping on a call every time someone wants to learn more about what your product can do.
Assuming you’ve built a smooth experience and a pretty interface, recording yourself as you use your software to finish real tasks and solve real problems in real time instills confidence that it actually does what it says.
Raycast, a productivity app, does this whenever it releases a big feature that feels like a standalone product within its suite of tools—like in this video announcing Raycast Notes to replace its floating notes feature.
While the most basic form of product demo is typically a screen recording with the person talking in the corner, Raycast takes it a step further:
- Beginning with a compilation of user feedback to make them feel involved in the product decision
- Using a sandbox setup of the software that simulates scenarios users can relate to
- Cutting between talking head footage and screen recordings to keep viewers engaged
4. Pre-launch teaser
Tasteful video teasers prove that sometimes less really is more and people actually do want what they can’t have (yet).
To paraphrase Alfred Hitchcock, who knew a thing or two about getting people to watch stuff, suspense is more powerful than surprise.
So, if you’re sitting on an announcement your audience would go nuts for, it might be worth dropping a teaser or two as part of a pre-launch campaign.
Done wrong, it can leave audiences confused or disappointed. Done right, it can build hype that makes the actual launch more exciting.
Loungewear brand Smash+Tess dropped an 8-second video teaser to announce an upcoming product collaboration with an unnamed creator, hidden behind the rim of her baseball hat.
A few days later, it was revealed to be Sarah Nicole Landry.
What makes this teaser work is:
- It invited fans to guess the identity of the partner in the comments
- It made hard-core Sarah Nicole Landry feel in on the secret, since they could probably tell it was her
- The pre-launch teaser and product launch content were from the same shoot, maintaining continuity while maximizing everyone's time and resources
5. Narrative thought leadership
Behind any interesting product is a strong opinion about why it was built. This vision contains the seeds of thought leadership that can engage an audience who are attracted to your worldview or have the problem you're solving.
In a narrative video, what your product does often takes a backseat to why it exists.
Daylight, a “less distracting” tablet, takes this messaging approach in its launch video with commentary about how our devices are designed to keep us distracted.
The product storytelling here is supported by:
- A soothing voiceover backed by a strong script that waxes poetic on our relationship with technology
- Product-in-action shots, b-roll footage, and music edited around the narration
- Framing the problem and Daylight as a solution, leaving features for the product page where other technology products often lead with technical specs
6. Kinetic typography
With all the things you can do with animated text and motion graphics, you actually don’t even need to turn on your camera or hire actors to make an engaging product launch video.
Popularized by Apple, kinetic typography applies choreography to video captions to make the words “dance” in sync with the music, narration, and visuals.
This makes it perfect for non-tangible products, like services and software, where lifestyle shots—at least interesting ones—are harder to come by.
A great example is this video used to launch Notion AI:
Kinetic typography is used here to:
- Employ a simple but effective structure where a title scene introduces each feature (e.g. “Find answers from all your apps”) followed by a scene that shows off a use case for it (e.g. "Any updates on the mobile improvements project?”).
- Avoid using a voiceover entirely so it can still say what it wants to when played without sound
- Make what are basically screen recordings of the product more visually interesting
How to make a product launch video that lands: Expert tips
Some of the videos we've looked at here, anybody could make. Others would require a fair amount of technical skill. The idea is to help you understand some of the principles that make these videos work. Now let's get into the fundamentals of actually creating video of any production quality.
Get your messaging straight
Whether it’s a commercial-quality video to launch a Kickstarter campaign or a simple vlog to announce a new feature to your followers, a strong format won’t save a video from weak messaging.
Messaging is how you strategically express yourself to carve out a distinct position in your target market, against a crowd of competing options.
It’s the reason Volvo is associated with safety and Toyota with reliability in whatever part of your brain is dedicated to opinions about cars. It’s not enough that the products deliver on their values—their marketing had to be guided by strategic messaging.
Good messaging is born from asking good questions like:
- Who are your ideal customers—the people who need the least convincing to buy your product?
- If not your product, then what would customers use—not just other competing brands but status quo solutions?
- What makes you unique—your features, solutions, business model, or a niche you focus on?
- What words do your customers tend to use (or do you want them to use) when they talk about you? You can parse your online reviews or think back to past 1:1 interactions.
- What does your brand voice sound like? If you haven’t defined it, what kind of tone would feel authentic to you and resonate with your customers?
Where messaging will often break down in a product launch is when the video your audience just watched doesn’t connect with the landing page they visit after. Robleh recommends getting feedback from people in your target audience before you roll out your messaging—to save you the time and headache of running in the wrong direction.
“It’s tempting to get fancy with slogans or taglines, but if people don’t immediately understand what your product does, you’ve lost them. That first headline on your website or Product Hunt page is make-or-break—it’s what gets people to scroll or just click away.”
—Robleh Jama
To guard against this, document your messaging so everyone’s on the same page (literally) and your vision isn’t lost in translation.
Here’s a product launch messaging template you can use.
2. Use AI as an assistant—not a replacement—in your process
Generative AI has come a long way in a short time, but there’s no magic prompt like “write a winning product launch video script” that’ll result in a video that’s sharp enough to stand out on the internet.
That’s because there’s a lot of context that only lives in your head, like your features, audience, target market, and brand voice—stuff that you might only nail down by immersing yourself in the creative process.
AI works best when the big picture thinking, like the messaging and premise, is led by a human and fed to the AI to act as an assistant to save time, get feedback, tighten your copy, tighten up your video, remove filler words, and conquer the blank page.
If you’re using Descript to create your product launch video, there are few ways your friendly neighborhood AI assistant, Underlord, can help you out.
Go from blank page to bad first draft faster
Sometimes you just need to see something—anything—on the page before the real inspiration strikes.
With the Write a script AI action, you can feed Underlord your messaging and context to write you a first draft. It probably won’t be one you use without significantly editing, but it can help establish an outline and structure for you to work with.
You can instruct it to use a specific copywriting framework by just referencing one of these acronyms in your instructions:
- AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action): Quickly capturing the audience’s attention, building interest in your product, creating desire by showcasing the benefits, and prompting immediate action like visiting the website.
- PAS (Problem, Agitation, Solution): Highlighting a common problem the audience faces, intensifying the urgency or emotional impact of the problem, and presenting your product as the ideal solution.
- BAB (Before, After, Bridge): Describing how life was before using the product, showing the positive changes after using it, and explaining how the product serves as the bridge to achieve these results.
Get specific feedback on your script
Feedback is a gift. Sometimes it’s gold and sometimes it’s a pair of socks.
Luckily, AI is pretty good at roleplaying as your target audience, so if you ask it for critical feedback it can give you some good suggestions.
In Descript, you can use open-ended questions to ask Underlord for specific feedback about your script, like:
- “How would you react to this video script as [target audience]?”
- “What objections or questions might my audience still have about my product?”
- “What are your honest thoughts about my script? Don’t hold back. I can handle it (I think).”
Underlord can also highlight issues for you in your script, suggest alternatives, or provide more detail if you want to follow up on its answers.
Edit and enhance your launch video
While you can produce almost any kind of video in Descript, its AI-powered features are especially useful for creating product demos, screen recordings, and talking-head videos.
You can use Underlord to:
- Remove background noise and filler words in one click so you sound really smart
- Create different variations and sizes of your product launch video optimized for your website, social media channels, and ads
- Transcribe, caption, and translate your video in different languages
- Fix your eye contact in post-production if you were reading off a script while recording
- A lot of other stuff
3. You can't buy attention with a big budget
A common misconception is that a good product launch video is supposed to be expensive.
That might’ve been true a decade ago, but not today when a 17-year-old recording on an iPhone with a cracked screen can rack up more organic views and engagement than most corporations.
“It’s easy to think you need something big and flashy, but I’ve found a clean, simple product demo often works just as well, if not better,” says Robleh. “A solid demo with good voiceover or motion graphics is usually more than enough to show off what your product can do and get people excited.”
There are a lot of helpful video tools out there that can help you DIY a professional-looking product launch video. Obviously, there’s Descript to edit videos like a doc (plus script, record, and all the rest).
But when it comes to product videos, some of my favorites that play well with Descript include:
- Rotato to whip up animated 3D mockups for apps and software on all devices
- Jitter to create your own motion graphics, from animations to kinetic typography, with templates
- Screen Studio for capturing phone or desktop recordings with automatic zooming and panning
Fuel your next launch with video
What was once a nice-to-have has become a necessary asset for marketing a big product or feature release today, especially on an increasingly video-centric internet.
Your product launch video can be the difference between launching to an audience of eager customers and launching to crickets.
Luckily, it doesn't take an Academy Award-winning filmmaker to make an interesting launch video.
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