LAUNCH CLEAN · THE ORDER

Four surfaces, one order, and only one of them is expensive to change.

A supplement launch publishes the same four surfaces in almost the same order every time, and each one answers to a different set of rules. Get them in the wrong order and you pay for the same sentence twice: once at the printer and once in a relist. This is the order we work in, what governs each stage, and the mistake that shows up most often at each one.

The one that costs money Everything on this page can be edited in a text box except the label. A claim that reaches print is a reprint, a re-photograph and often a new batch of cartons. That is why the label is stage one even though it usually gets written last.

Stage 1 · The label, before the print run

Answers to: FDA structure/function and disease claim rules, and in Canada your Health Canada licence, which states the recommended use that is actually authorised.

The trap: a claim that is fine in an ad becomes a labelling claim on a carton, and a Canadian licence authorises one specific use while the label promises three. Marketing beyond the authorised use is not common in what we have scanned, roughly one brand in thirty, but it is invisible from the US side and checkable against the licence itself. Catch it here and it costs an edit; catch it later and the cartons are already printed.

Clear before printing: the front panel, every claim on the back, the disclaimer placement, and the product name itself. A name that implies treatment is a claim, and renaming after a print run is the most expensive fix in this business.

Stage 2 · The listing, before it publishes

Answers to: the marketplace policy that governs the listing, plus the same FDA and FTC rules. On Amazon that is the supplements policy, which prohibits disease claims and disease terms in backend keywords, plus the Supplement Facts panel match, where every milligram figure in your title, bullets, description and images has to agree with the panel.

The trap: backend keywords. They are invisible to a shopper, they feel like SEO rather than copy, and they are read as claims. The second trap is the mismatch between a rounded number in a bullet and the exact figure on the panel.

Clear before publishing: title, all bullets, description, A+ content, backend keywords, and every image containing text.

Stage 3 · The first ad set, before the account has history

Answers to: Meta's advertising standards for health, and Google's healthcare and medicines policy. Meta's cover before-and-after implication, sensational health language and personal-attribute framing, which is the "Struggling with [condition]?" construction.

The trap, and this is the one nobody is told: a health-claims flag attaches to the ad account, not to the ad. A line that runs in week one sits on the account every later campaign has to use. This is why stage three is worth more attention than its budget suggests, and why "we will fix it if it becomes a problem" is not a plan.

Clear before running: every creative variant, the primary text, headlines, and any landing page the ad points to.

Stage 4 · Email and owned surfaces, before the first send

Answers to: the FTC substantiation standard, which asks for evidence you hold before the claim runs rather than after, and in Canada the Competition Act, where the proof of an adequate and proper test lies on the person making the representation.

The trap: welcome flows and abandoned-cart sequences get written once, by whoever is fastest, and then run untouched for years. They are the least reviewed copy a brand owns and the most repeated.

Clear before sending: the welcome sequence, the product education emails, and anything on your own site that a retail buyer or an acquirer will read later.

After launch: the two things that move without you

Launch Clean includes the first month of monitoring for both. After that it is $750 a month, and a brand that does not take it should treat its report as a photograph rather than a state of affairs.

What Launch Clean covers

$650 flat, up to 3 SKUs, five business days. Every claim across the stages above ruled against 92 standards drawn from the twelve rulebooks, every failing line rewritten into a version that still sells, signed by a licensed pharmacist. Drafts are fine: Google Docs, a spreadsheet, a staging URL. The whole point is to read it before it is public.

The Launch Clean page has the full scope and how to start. The limits are published too, because what a review cannot tell you matters before you buy rather than after.

Review of marketing language only, not product testing, formulation, facility compliance, or legal advice. We state what the published rules say and never predict what any platform or regulator will do.

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