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 called a substantiation file, and most small product companies do not have one.
The Document Comes Before The Copy, Not After It
The sequence most companies follow is backward. Copy is drafted, packaging goes to print, the product ships, and then someone asks what supports the claim on the front panel. At that point the company is reverse-engineering justification for a promise already in the market, which is the worst possible position to research from.
Capuano’s rule is to build the file first. Every claim gets a line, and every line gets attached to something. A study, a test report, an engineering measurement, a survey, a standard the product was tested against. If a claim cannot be attached to anything, it does not go on the package. The discipline is not legal caution for its own sake. It is the same discipline that produces a good product, applied one step earlier.
Claims Have Categories, And The Categories Set The Evidence Bar
Not every sentence carries the same documentation burden, and knowing the difference saves a great deal of work. Puffery, meaning subjective praise no reasonable buyer treats as a factual promise, needs no file. Objective performance claims need evidence proportional to what they assert. Comparative claims need evidence about the competitor as well as the product, which means head to head testing rather than a favorable reading of two separate datasets.
The sharpest line runs between a wellness or general-use claim and a claim that the product treats, prevents, or mitigates a condition. The second kind moves a product into regulated territory regardless of how the company describes itself, and the documentation required changes accordingly.
Capuano’s view is that founders cross that line not through ambition but through enthusiasm, usually in a single adjective added late in the process by someone who did not know the sentence had a legal weight class.
Every claim on a package is a promise the company has agreed to document. The only question is whether the document was written before the promise or after the complaint.
Testimonials And Endorsements Are Documents Too
Customer testimonials, professional endorsements, and influencer content all carry documentation obligations that founders rarely anticipate. A testimonial describing an unusual result implies that result is typical unless the company can show otherwise.
An endorsement from a professional implies the endorser has actually used and evaluated the product. Compensation or free product creates a material connection that has to be disclosed, and the disclosure is the company’s responsibility even when someone else publishes the post.
The practical requirement is a paper trail: signed releases, dated records of what each endorser received, and written disclosure instructions provided in advance. Capuano treats that file as part of the same substantiation system rather than a separate marketing matter, because when a claim is challenged, the origin of the statement and the support for it are examined together.
The Package, The Website, And The Listing Have To Say The Same Thing
Substantiation problems often start as version control problems. The printed package says one thing, the website says something slightly stronger, and the marketplace listing, written by a contractor two years ago, says something the company would never approve today. All three are live, all three are attributable to the company, and the strongest version is the one that sets the standard the company will be measured against.
Capuano recommends a claims inventory that lists every public claim by channel, with the supporting document referenced beside it. The inventory is reviewed when the formula changes, when a supplier changes, when a new channel opens, and on a fixed annual date regardless.
Claims drift upward over time as copy is rewritten by people who never saw the original file, and a scheduled review is the only thing that catches the drift before a regulator, a competitor, or a retailer does.
The File Is An Asset, Not An Expense
The argument Capuano makes to founders who see substantiation as overhead is a commercial one. Retail buyers ask for claim support during vendor review. Distributors ask for it before they take on a line. Acquirers ask for it during diligence, and a company that cannot produce a file for the claims on its own packaging invites a discount or an indemnity holdback for the exposure.
Built early, the substantiation file costs the price of doing the testing the company probably should have done anyway. Built late, it costs a packaging rerun, a listing takedown, and a conversation with a retailer who now has a documented reason to question everything else the vendor has said. The document is cheap on the way in and expensive on the way out.
Steven Capuano is a product entrepreneur and inventor whose work centers on intellectual property, manufacturing, and the document systems behind small consumer product companies. More at stevencapuano.com.
Published originally on — https://bitrebels.com/business/steven-capuano-on-the-substantiation-documents-behind-every-claim-a-product-makes/
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