A sentence at the top of a web page may run long. The side of a bottle may not. Even when both talk about the same ingredient, copy makes an image and a label makes a disclosure. Write both in one document at once and the words that cannot go on the bottle set first.
This piece does not claim an effect for a product. It writes the sequence that repeats on the floor when a sentence moves onto a health-functional or general-food label.
We split the sentences into two sheets
When work starts we split the files in two. One sheet is web and detail page. One sheet is labeled facts. If you make a label by shortening lines in one file, the temperature of the copy stays in the cuts.
- Web sheet — who uses it, the day’s rhythm, form, taste, pack
- Label sheet — product name, net contents, ingredients, intake, cautions, business facts
However good a web-sheet sentence is, if the label sheet has no cell for it, that sentence does not go on the bottle. We write that fact down first.
The ingredient table sits in front of the copy
Write the copy first and the ingredient gets dragged into the sentence. We reverse the order. Formula and amounts, and the licensed range of a functional ingredient, come first. Only then does “what we may say” exist.
A verb outside that range we delete from the web sheet too, early. An overheated verb that lives only on the detail page will collide with the label in ad review and in customer mail.
Words that get cut
Some words are cut again and again as they move to the bottle.
- Best, at once, guaranteed — temperature of the image, not a disclosure
- Disease names and treatment verbs
- A rank against another product
- A personal promise to the person who takes it (“even if you are sensitive”)
Whether the cut words stay on the web is a separate call. If they stay, we look once more for a clash with the label. If they clash, we fix the web. The bottle is already in the print queue.
Label proofing is not a design check. The inspection is not whether the letters fit the cell. It is whether the letters that entered the cell match the source.
Proof order
We check four times before the print file.
- Do product name, net contents, and business facts match the filing
- Do ingredients and amounts match the formula sheet
- Do intake amount and method read as one line
- Are cautions missing, or mixed with another product’s sentences
Color and logo are fifth. A pretty label that is already off in the first four goes around again. In a small batch, a reprint can cost more than a prototype.
Bottle, box, and web should see the same image
If the three faces say different things, the user remembers the strongest sentence. If that sentence is not on the label, the product cannot prove what it said.
The studio method is simple. Lock the label-sheet sentences first. The web sheet may raise the temperature only on top of that. Keeping the image from invading the label is the last step of the copy process.
What we leave for next time
When the version changes we leave three lines. Which sentences were cut. Which amounts changed. The filename we handed the printer. Without those three, the next small batch fights the copy again from the start. A label is not a sticker. It is the process by which a product closes its own name in one line.