How to write a hook for a product video

Most product videos are written in the wrong order. You open a document, type the product name, describe what it does, and then — right at the end, when the energy is gone — you try to invent an exciting first line to put on top of it.

That is why so many openers sound like a press release read by someone in a hurry. The hook was an afterthought, and it shows in the first second.

Write it the other way around. The hook is not a decoration on the script. It is the argument, compressed. Everything after it is just proof.

Step 1: write down the objection, not the product

Before you write a word of the video, finish this sentence in your customer’s voice, not yours:

“I’d buy this, but…”

For a £90 knife block: “I’d buy this, but I already own knives.” For a resistance band set: “I’d buy this, but I know I won’t use it.” For a mattress topper: “I’d buy this, but returning it if it’s wrong sounds like a nightmare.”

That sentence is the whole video. The hook’s only job is to make the person who thinks it stop scrolling long enough to hear your answer.

Step 2: find the interesting half

Now take your objection and ask what is surprising about your answer to it. Not what is good about it — what is unexpected.

“Our knives stay sharp longer” is good. It is not surprising. “The block is what blunts your knives, not the cutting” is surprising, and it turns the objection — I already own knives — into a reason to keep watching.

If nothing about your answer is surprising, you do not have a hook problem, you have a positioning problem. That is worth knowing before you book a shoot.

Step 3: say it in under ten words

Write the surprising thing as flatly as you can. No adjectives, no build-up, no “in this video I’m going to show you”. Just the claim:

• “Your knife block is blunting your knives.”
• “You will not use these. Here’s the version you will.”
• “Returning a mattress topper is worse than keeping a bad one.”

Ten words is not a rule handed down from a platform. It is the length that fits on screen at a readable size and comes out of a mouth in about two seconds.

Step 4: put a body on it

A hook that is only words is half a hook. Decide, in the same breath, what the viewer sees while they hear it. The strongest openers show the thing the line is about:

The line and the image should say the same thing twice. If your visual is a person talking to camera and nothing else, you are asking one channel to carry the whole opener.

Step 5: cut the first two seconds off

This is the edit that improves the most openers, and almost nobody does it.

Film your opener, then watch it back and delete everything before the first interesting word. The breath. The “so”. The “hey guys”. The half-second of someone settling into frame. The reach for the product.

Nine times out of ten the video is better starting two seconds later, and the sentence you thought was your hook turns out to have been the second sentence all along.

The four things that kill an opener

It is about you. “We spent two years developing…” is a story about your company. Nobody scrolling has agreed to care about your company yet.

It hedges. “This might be one of the best ways to…” reads as a person who does not believe their own claim. Say it or cut it.

It asks a question with an obvious answer. “Want softer skin?” Yes. Everyone does. A question only works as a hook when the honest answer is I don’t know — “How old is the pillow you’re sleeping on?” earns a pause because the viewer has to go and check.

It explains before it claims. Context is what the middle of the video is for. If your first line contains the word “because”, the interesting part is probably after it.

Write more than one

The single biggest change you can make is not writing better hooks. It is writing more of them and then choosing.

Five hooks for the same product will not be five variations on one idea if you force each to answer a different objection. Take the same knife block: price, “I already own knives”, “I don’t have counter space”, “it’ll look cheap in my kitchen”, “I’ll never sharpen them anyway”. Five objections, five different openers, none of which you would have reached by polishing the first one.

Then pick between them the way a viewer would — fast, side by side, without reading your own reasoning back to yourself. That is the part a head-to-head comparison does better than a document.

Where to go next

If you want ready-made shapes to pour your objection into, the hook formulas guide lists the patterns that keep working. If your video is going on TikTok specifically, the first three seconds guide covers what has to be on screen while the line is being said.