You too can throw a Microsoft Launch Party. Unless you live in the US where they have already met their quota. Presumably with a mix of Microsoft employees and people that signed up ironically. If you haven’t seen the instructional video with its politically correct mixing of presenters look no further.
The whole event seems to be outsourced to a group called House Party. This group seems to fill a void for companies that want to run in home events as a one off rather than a standard channel to market.
In home marketing has been a successful business strategy for some companies, it seeks to generate extra sales from having people able to touch and see the product. Add to that the peer pressure of having to make your purchases in front of your friends, with some suttle hints that the host will miss out on their gift if a particular quota is not met. On the scale of “honest business image” it runs somewhere between direct marketing and infomercials. This is because it is trying to force an outcome rather than just inform. The best marketing is word of mouth references, and ‘party’ style marketing is trying to make this occur faster or stronger than it would naturally.
Whoever made the decision to use this as a marketting strategy for a blue-chip IT company is either completely ungrounded in reality, or is some sort of genius savant that the marketing world will be hailing once it thrills the world. I’m not so sure about the second option.
Here’s a tip to other companies thinking about this type of advertising. If your product has some sort of link to a party, like food, drink or music, it might be worth considering. If your product is the sort that is involved in party-killing conversations, like psoriasis treatment or computer operating system upgrades, it might not go so well. This beats Songsmith!
A good rundown of this and some other Microsoft advertising genius from history check out CNet.