Packaging and insert copy

What packaging and insert copy is

Packaging copy is the text printed on the product itself: the front panel, the back panel, the side panels, the lid. Insert copy is the card, leaflet or folded sheet that goes in the parcel with it. Between them they carry what the item is, what is in it, how to use and care for it, who made it, how to get another, and what to do if something is wrong.

It is not label design and it is not regulatory labelling. Ingredient lists, allergen declarations, bilingual requirements and net quantity statements are set by rule and by your packaging supplier, and I write around them, not instead of them. It is also not brochure copy. A brochure has room to argue. A box panel has forty words and a card has two hundred, and they have to work on a kitchen counter while somebody is holding scissors.

When you need it

You need it when new packaging is being designed and the designer has sent a layout with placeholder text in it. That is the moment the writing is cheapest to get right, and the moment it is most often left until the file is due at the printer.

You also need it when the parcel says nothing. Plenty of online shops post a beautifully made product in a plain box with a packing slip, and that parcel is the only physical contact the customer ever has with the business. A card in it costs cents and is the most reliable place there is to ask for a repeat order or a review, because the customer is holding the thing they just bought and is at their most pleased with it.

The third case is a product coming back with support questions that a line on the box would have prevented. You do not need this if the real problem is happening before the sale, though. Questions asked while somebody is deciding belong on the website as answers published before they buy, which is a different and usually larger job.

What gets written

• The front panel. The product name, and one line saying what it is for somebody who has never seen it. Six to ten words. This is the slowest part of the whole job.
• The back and side panels. What it does, what is included, how to use it, and the practical warnings, written to the exact word count the layout allows.
• Care and use instructions. Short, numbered, and written from watching someone unfamiliar try it, not from how the person who designed it assumes it works.
• The insert card. A thank-you in a human voice, the one thing people most often get wrong on first use, how to reorder, and where to go for help.
• The review request. One specific ask, timed and worded so it does not read like a demand. Asking about the thing they bought works; asking for five stars does not.
• The reorder prompt. A short line with a code or a simple address, placed where somebody who liked it will see it a second time when the product runs out.

What you get

The copy, laid out by panel. A document with one block per surface, each labelled to match the designer's artwork, with the character count stated against the space available. Your designer drops it in; nobody retypes anything.

The insert card, in two lengths. A full version and a short version, because the card size usually changes once during design and it saves a round of emails to have both ready.

A print checklist. The things to confirm before the file goes out, including the ones that cannot be fixed afterwards: the reorder code, the web address, the contact route and anything with a date on it.

A worked example

An illustration. A Prince Edward Island company making loose-leaf tea blends sells online and through a dozen gift shops. The tins carry the blend name and an ingredient list. The parcels go out with a packing slip and nothing else. Repeat orders happen, but only when a customer remembers the name of the business.

The tin gets thirty-two words on the back: what is in the blend, how it tastes, how to brew it, and the fact that the tin holds about twenty cups. The brewing line is the one that changes the product, because the previous instruction was on a sticker that came off. The insert card is a hundred and forty words: a plain thank-you that names the person who packed it, one line about the mistake most people make with the first cup, a reorder line with the blend's short code, and a request that asks which blend they would try next rather than for a rating. The tea does not change. The second order stops depending on memory.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What is being printed, what the parcel contains now, and when the artwork is due. No charge.
2. The layout and the constraints. The designer's template or the dielines, plus whatever the regulator and the printer require in the space. The word counts come from these, not from me.
3. A fixed price in writing. The number of surfaces and the number of products, agreed before anything starts.
4. The draft. Five to seven working days. Delivered by panel, with two or three options for the front-panel line, because that one is always chosen by committee.
5. The fit check. Your designer sets it in the real artwork and tells me what overruns. I cut to fit. This round is included and it is always needed.
6. Print sign-off. A final read of the proof against the checklist before it goes to the printer.

What it costs

Packaging and insert copy is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. It is priced by the number of printed surfaces rather than by word count, because a forty-word panel takes longer than four hundred words of web copy and pricing it by length would be dishonest. A range of products sharing one template is quoted as a set. The figure is fixed in writing before anything starts, and the pricing page shows how quotes are built here.

What happens next

The insert card starts a conversation that has to continue somewhere. Most businesses follow it with the first messages a new customer receives, so the card and the email say the same thing in the same voice. The front-panel line, once it exists, tends to be the best short description the business has, and it usually gets carried back onto the site through the writing on each product page. If the same products also go out through a portal, the listings there need rewriting inside that platform's rules, and the parcel is the only part of that sale you control. None of this is assumed. The printed copy is complete on its own.