Marketing copy is written in an afternoon. Steven Capuano argues that every sentence on the box is a promise the company has to be able to document, and that the file proving it should exist before the copy does.
A founder writes the front of the package. Clinically tested. Relieves discomfort in minutes. Outperforms leading alternatives. The words feel like marketing, because that is the department they came from. Steven Capuano’s position is that they are not marketing at all. They are assertions of fact, and the company making them is expected to hold a documented basis for each one at the moment it is published.
Advertising law in the United States works on a simple premise. A company must have adequate support for a claim before it makes the claim, not after someone questions it.
Objective performance and health-related claims are held to a standard of competent and reliable evidence, which in practice means documentation a qualified person would accept. The file that holds that documentation is calle
