CPG copywriting

A consumer packaged good competes twice. Once on a shelf against forty other products, and once in a feed against everything else a person could be looking at.

Both fights are won on the same thing: giving someone a reason to care about a product they weren’t thinking about a second ago.

Low consideration, low patience

Nobody researches a hand soap. The purchase is fast, the price is low, and the amount of attention available is close to zero.

That means CPG copy can’t explain its way to a sale. It has to land in a line, and it has to be about something a person already feels rather than something the product does.

The instinct to list features works against you here. Twelve botanical extracts is a fact; your kitchen smelling like a lemon tree is a reason to buy.

Retail and DTC at the same time

Most CPG brands are now selling through both, and the copy has to work in both places.

The product page has room to argue and has to handle objections. The shelf has three seconds and a package. Paid social sits between them, doing awareness work and conversion work in the same ad. Copy that treats those as one problem underperforms everywhere.

When the claims are regulated

Plenty of CPG sits in categories where language gets reviewed. Personal care, skincare, supplements, anything making a health or safety claim.

I’ve written inside those limits, including for an FDA-cleared product, where every claim about what the formula does had to be structured carefully enough to survive review and still convert.

Frequently asked questions

What’s different about writing for a CPG brand?

Attention is scarce and consideration is low. Nobody researches a hand soap, so the copy has to land in a line rather than argue its way to a sale. The other difference is that most CPG brands sell through retail and DTC at once, and the same message has to work on a package, a product page, and a paid social ad.

Can you write copy that has to pass regulatory review?

Yes. I’ve written for an FDA-cleared product where every claim about what the formula does had to survive review before it shipped. Supplements, skincare, and personal care all run into similar limits. Working inside them is a craft problem rather than an obstacle.

Which CPG brands have you written for?

Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day, CelleRX, Avenova, and Natural Balance Pet Food, across household, skincare, personal care, and pet food.

How do you keep brand voice consistent across packaging, product pages, and ads?

Settle the voice before anything gets written, then write the package last. Packaging is the most compressed version of a message the brand is saying everywhere else: a few words on a label have to carry the same voice as a product page with room to argue and a paid social ad built for a scroll. If the package is written first, it usually ends up setting the voice by accident. If it’s written last, it inherits a voice that’s already been tested where there’s room to get it right.

Tell me what your copy needs to do

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