Take Payment Information on Free Item

@miggle You are correct, WooCommerce esentially requires a paid product to conduct the payment transaction. So, you might need to customize the WooCommerce plugin itself which isn’t recommended.

I understand that for such a campaign it’s difficult to predict the actual launch date but in case you are all set with a future launch date, you can check the WooCommerce Subscription plugin. You will just need to setup a free trial( till the launch date). You can manage the entire payment with a single recurring payment.