You might have noticed something: no real Photokina announcements were made today. I suspect something similar will happen on Thursday, too. What’s happening?
It’s calendar crowding, basically. Photokina is September 16-21. Most of the time you want to announce prior to that big show so that people know to prioritize your booth over the hundreds of other booths scattered across multiple buildings. You want a crowd at your booth from minute one. Crowds attract crowds. Crowds create buzz.
So you’re going to announce your product by September 15 at the latest. Of course, in the US, September 1 this year was Labor Day, and that’s a day where you don’t want to launch because no one is really paying attention to news. August is out for most of Europe due to vacations. So we’re left with September 2-15 for our primary product launches. Weekends are typically out, as again they are not days that produce huge notice—I even see that on this Web site, as traffic drops by almost half on weekends versus weekdays.
Okay, we’re down to September 2-5, 8-12, and 15. Oh, there’s this company called Apple that’s going to launch something today (September 9) and probably dominate all press for the day. Probably don’t want to launch that day, either, or else you’ll risk no one hearing your tree fall in the woods. You probably don’t want to announce on September 11th, either. Putting commerce first on a day of remembrance for a large portion of your audience probably isn’t a good idea.
Then there’s IFA, the big trade show for consumer electronics and home appliances, which has turned into a place where all the mobile vendors seem to congregate with announcements. That was September 5-10 this year.
So this year we’re left with the following “good days” to announce for Photokina:
- September 2-4 — will get competed with by IFA announcements
- September 8, 10
- September 15
Which is why when the announcements come, they’ll come in very quick succession. Some will even be done on sub-optimal days just prior to the show (September 12-14).
