Launch Brief

Launch Brief

Generates the Week 1 foundation brief for an L/XL launch — the document every gate, calendar, and channel asset hangs on. The brief is the launch's constitution: if it's wrong, everything downstream inherits the error, which is why it carries the heaviest approval roster in the process.

When to invoke

• Week 1 of any L/XL launch ("write the launch brief for [product]")
• A launch is being stood up and no brief exists
• Re-baselining after a meaningful product change (canon edge rule 1 — a pure calendar slip does not reopen the brief)

The brief's anatomy (canon Week 1, in order)

1. Launch date + feature freeze — confirmed by the product owner or the entire brief is marked DRAFT on its face.
2. Subscriber lens — can all our subscribers use it? A "no" here is a strategy conversation, not a footnote.
3. Customer profile — one core psychographic or professional target, sub-targets allowed, laddering to one–two archetypes (Builder, Operator, Seeker, Executive). Feeling-first archetype analysis per marketing-science/archetyping, not projection.
4. Why / success / how — why we're doing this, what defines success, and how we drive it. Separate business, activation, proof, learning, and brand outcomes; name the decisions the measures will inform.
5. Dream tweet and dream headline — written out verbatim. These are the retro's scoring rubric; vague versions make the retro unscoreable. The headline should validate the intended category belief or customer outcome, not repeat the tagline.
6. Positioning and story — what we made, why we made it, who it's for. For net-new products, the why-now / why-us / why-this narrative discipline from launches/new-product-launch applies.
7. Competitive picture — the marketing-science/research competitive-audit summary, source-linked.
8. Pricing owner named — Brandon + the product GM (canon ruling); target lock at the wireframe gate, hard lock Monday of the Launch Week window.
9. Roster — collected for this launch and never inherited.
10. Approval record — Douglas, Brandon + GM (co-rule), stakeholders, Dan, Austin; with dates. An unapproved brief blocks Week 2 (canon Rule 3).
11. GTM handoff — mark the primary customer, buyer/champion/user roles, market tension, positioning inputs, verified internal proof, and open product truths that marketing/gtm must inherit. Do not pre-write the channel plan inside the brief.

Rules

• Facts the model cannot know (dates, freezes, rosters, product truths) are collected from the humans who own them and attributed; gaps are marked OPEN, never filled with plausible text.
• The brief states its own confirmation status at the top.
• Length discipline: the brief is read at a gate meeting — pages, not a deck.

Dependencies

• foundation/marketing-os
• launches/canonical-process.md (Week 1 checklist, rosters, epistemic rules)
• marketing-science/archetyping · marketing-science/research
• positioning/every-master · positioning/{product} (dynamically)
• marketing-science/research competitive-audit output as input
• launches/new-product-launch (narrative discipline, for net-new products)

Downstream: the approved brief becomes an input to the flagship mode in marketing/gtm.

Quick checklist

• Date + freeze confirmation status stated on the face of the doc
• Subscriber lens answered, escalated if "no"
• Customer profile laddered to archetypes, feeling-first
• Dream tweet + dream headline verbatim (the retro rubric)
• GTM handoff names the primary customer, role system, tension, proof, and OPEN truths
• Competitive claims source-linked
• Pricing owner named per the Brandon + GM ruling
• Roster collected fresh; OPEN items marked, not filled
• Approval record present: Douglas, Brandon + GM, stakeholders, Dan, Austin