Most Marketing Problems Start Long Before Marketing Gets InvolvedBy the time a product reaches marketing, most people assume our job is to “make it appealing.”
In reality, we’re often dealing with the consequences of decisions made months earlier—decisions we weren’t part of.
I lead marketing for a supplement brand, and collagen products are some of the most difficult to position. The expectations are high, the competition is loud, and the regulatory boundaries are tight.
What many people don’t realize is that no amount of creative messaging can fix a product that wasn’t designed with communication in mind.
That lesson became very clear during our first major collaboration with a collagen supplement ODM partner.
When the product brief landed on my desk, I was excited. The formulation looked solid, the sourcing was reputable, and the timeline was ambitious but realistic.
Then I started asking marketing questions.
What can we say about absorption?
How do we describe benefits without crossing lines?
What makes this different in one sentence?
The answers were hesitant.
Not because the product was weak, but because those questions hadn’t guided the development process. The formula was built to work—but not necessarily to be explained.
That’s when I realized something uncomfortable.
Marketing wasn’t late to the project. Marketing had been absent from the project’s foundation.
As we moved forward, my team tried to build narratives around the product. We tested language, explored positioning angles, and mapped competitive claims. Each attempt ran into the same barrier: uncertainty.
We could describe what the product contained, but not confidently articulate why it mattered in a crowded market—at least not without risk.
The issue wasn’t creativity. It was constraint.
ODM decisions had already locked in what was possible to say. Certain benefits couldn’t be highlighted. Certain comparisons couldn’t be made. Certain phrases required disclaimers that weakened impact.
At that point, marketing becomes reactive.
Instead of shaping the story, we were negotiating around limitations. Instead of leading with clarity, we were filtering ourselves.
That’s not a marketing failure. It’s a development one.
In strong ODM projects, marketing considerations are not an afterthought. They are inputs. Not to drive exaggerated claims, but to ensure that the product has a clear, defensible narrative.
When marketing is involved early, questions get asked sooner.
What is the core message this product can own?
What conversations can it safely participate in?
What expectations should it avoid creating?
Those questions influence formulation, dosage, sourcing, and even packaging decisions.
In one later project, we were brought into the ODM discussions from the beginning. The difference was immediate.
Instead of asking us to “sell this,” the team asked us what would be difficult to sell. That reframed everything.
We identified claims that would require constant explanation. We flagged benefits that sounded appealing but were hard to communicate responsibly. We highlighted areas where simpler positioning would outperform complexity.
The ODM partner took that feedback seriously.
They adjusted the development path—not to make marketing easier, but to make it honest. The result wasn’t a louder product. It was a clearer one.
When the product launched, marketing didn’t feel like damage control. It felt like amplification.
We weren’t stretching language. We weren’t relying on implication. We were explaining something that had been designed to be explained.
That’s the difference early ODM collaboration makes.
From a marketing perspective, collagen supplement ODM is not just about building a product. It’s about defining the boundaries of the story you’ll tell for years.
Once those boundaries are set, no amount of creativity can move them.
That’s why I now insist on being involved earlier—not to dictate development, but to ensure alignment. Marketing doesn’t need to drive formulation. But it does need to understand and influence the narrative framework.
Otherwise, you end up launching products that work—but are hard to talk about.
And in a competitive market, silence is not safety. It’s invisibility.
