Press releases, sales pitches and other promotions should begin only after the site is up and tested. As every cook knows, before serving a dish to a guest, it should be prepared and served to family or close friends to perfect the recipe. Web sites should also be tested before being served up to the target audience. Everything from usability to content to browser compatibility to functionality must be tested thoroughly and in a realistic manner. They need to include this in their development schedule because they may be frantically working on any bugs found by the testers when the banners are needed.
Someone has to wash the dishes and put away the cookbooks.
Once the initial site has been presented, the site materials, site architecture and the various content sources need to be backed up and archived. Documentation for the development, design and programming needs to be checked, updated and stored in an accessible format and location. Nothing's worse than having a system failure or hacker attack and discover no one has a back up of the most important file on the site. Be certain everyone understands who owns what rights to what material. This should all be spelled and exchanged in signed agreements or contracts.