Seven cases of brands with brilliant product copy

Here are seven examples from brands like Nike, Nordstrom, Amazon, and Cards Against Humanity that show you how product copy should be done.

What makes good product copy? It should be concise. It should makes sense for your brand; does it have a consistent voice across your various marketing channels?

Ideally, good product copy is also attention-grabbing and provocative, in a good way. It’s probably best to avoid something like making your buy button say “Rape us now,” for example.

1. Chubbies

Chubbies isn’t exactly a household name brand – although it is pretty aggressive with its paid social, so you may be familiar with it if you’re a male Facebook user – but it still comes up on our lists fairly regularly.

The brand has a strong voice that really speaks to exactly who its core customer is, and it helps that that voice is also irreverent and funny. During a recent #ClickZChat on Twitter, I referred to “hiring really witty people” as an underutilizeed marketing strategy, one that isn’t lost on Chubbies.

2. Nike

People wear sneakers for two reasons – athletics and style – and Nike’s new rainforest-inspired Running Jungle Pack was designed with a little from a column A, a little bit from column B in mind.

This bit of copy from Nike’s website sums that up contrast nicely by bringing up the colors and “your inner animal.” The homepage video shows the sneaker being made out of butterflies, which are pretty and colorful, and also quick and hard to catch.

3. Cards Against Humanity

Cards Against Humanity is a party game popular enough to merit several supplemental decks to add to your card collection. The copywriting matches the snarky tone of the game; you can almost hear the ironic earnestness dripping off “Once you Pop, the fun don’t stop!”

All the ’90s taglines are a nice touch, as well, appealing to exactly the type of person who would purchase this product.

4. Amazon

Not overloading an ad with too much information is Marketing 101. The Amazon Echo does a lot of things: turns on your lights, orders pizzas and Ubers, tells you about the weather, plays music.

The latter is the focus of this house ad from Amazon’s homepage, which says a lot with just seven words. Alexa’s musical capabilities are a big selling point, and Amazon was sure to include the logos for Spotify and Pandora in there, just for good measure.

5. Airfarewatchdog

I’d never heard of Airfarewatchdog, a website that aggregates cheap airfares, but this sponsored post on Facebook caught my eye. Clever copy is good, but not always necessary; for some products, like a flight, people mostly just care about price.

With paid social, you only have a line or two to work with, and Airfarewatchdog got right to the point, grabbing your attention with a beautiful picture of the Eiffel Tower and keeping it with the promise of $565 round-trip flights to Europe.

6. Hasbro

When it comes to copy, toy brands have to be especially on point because they’re supposed to appeal to both the kids who will play with the products and the parents who will buy it. Hasbro’s product description for the Play-Doh Town Ice Cream Truck toes the line quite well. It may be long, but the sentences are enthusiastic and simple enough for young kids to be able to read.

At the same time, all the descriptive language reinforces to the parents that this toy is a good value because of its many features, while also implying how much it’ll foster their kids’ creativity.

7. Nordstrom

This example from Nordstrom’s website isn’t product copy the same way the others are, but it’s brilliant in its simplicity.

Ecommerce websites have so much product, they can be overwhelming, especially when the retailer is as large as Nordstrom. Assigning just one word of copy to each of these dresses, Nordstrom makes its website infinitely more navigable and user-friendly for all the women who are, as my mom says, “just seeing what they have.”