The single biggest mistake I see in emerging market launches is treating the launch date as the finish line. It's the opposite. Everything that happens in the six months after launch matters more than the event itself, because that's when institutions and press decide whether you're a company or a moment.
Emerging markets, more than mature ones, run on reputational memory. People remember who showed up once and disappeared. A strong launch followed by silence does more damage than a modest launch followed by consistency.
Practically, this changes how I plan a launch. I spend less time on the launch event itself and more time designing what happens in weeks two, eight, and twenty: a second story, a follow up partnership, a piece of data shared with the same journalists who covered day one. The launch is the opening line, not the whole story.
If you only budget for the launch, you're budgeting for the easiest six percent of the work.