During Consumer Brands’ National Consumer Transparency Week, I published a blog detailing how consumer transparency must be precompetitive — meaning that digital disclosure works best when there is a consistent industry standard that consumers can become familiar with, understand the details of and trust as a product information resource. When brands adopt this industry standard, a rising tide lifts all boats.

But there’s a practical question that follows that principle, and I hear it often from brands weighing their next move: If transparency is the destination, why not just build the road myself?

It’s a fair question. And the honest answer is that a brand can stand up its own QR code, its own landing page and its own way of displaying ingredients and nutrition. What it can’t do is deliver the one thing consumers and regulators actually want: consistency.

The Problem With a Thousand Front Doors

Imagine a shopper standing in a grocery aisle. She scans a cereal box and gets a tidy list of ingredients. She scans the coffee next to it and gets a marketing microsite. She scans the household cleaner in her cart and gets a PDF that won’t load on her phone. Same gesture, three completely different experiences.

That is the world of “do it yourself” at scale — a thousand front doors, each with its own layout, its own logic and its own learning curve. Every time the experience changes, the consumer has to start over. And every friction point could lead to a small withdrawal from the consumer trust our industry has built.

Consistency is more than a design choice. It can make product information easier to find and help consumers become familiar with a disclosure tool. Research shows that 94 percent of consumers who have used SmartLabel® have done so more than once. The tool’s consistent format supports that experience by organizing product information in familiar ways across participating brands. That predictability is precisely what a proprietary, one-off solution cannot replicate.

Why “Uniform” Is the Smarter Business Decision

Building and maintaining your own disclosure platform is not a one-time cost. It is a standing obligation: keeping data accurate, staying current with GS1 data standards, adapting to a moving regulatory target, and rebuilding when regulations change.

SmartLabel provides a shared framework and resources that can help brands manage evolving disclosure requirements. The data still belongs to the brand — it is owned, managed and hosted by the brand owner, so it is accurate and trusted — but the standard, governance and compliance work is shared. This becomes particularly valuable as companies navigate a growing patchwork of state and federal disclosure requirements that can differ in the products they cover, the information they require and how that information must be presented. When ingredient labeling regulations change, whether through state requirements such as California’s Cleaning Product Right to Know Act or federal mandates like the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, brands on a uniform system can move together at once, instead of each solving the same puzzle alone and hoping they get it right. SmartLabel is one solution, vetted for accessibility and readability, and already mapped to multiple states’ requirements.

There is also a fast-approaching deadline that makes this concrete. With GS1 Sunrise 2027, retail point-of-sale systems are transitioning from the 1D UPC barcode to 2D QR codes. CPG leaders have already created the path: they don’t need to build something new — they’re merely extending the SmartLabel-branded QR code that’s already in market so the same code works for both consumer transparency and scanning items at the register. That is the power of a uniform standard. It compounds.

The Policy Case for a Voluntary Shared Standard

This is where the interests of the CPG industry and the public converge — and why I think this issue reaches far beyond Consumer Brands members.

Where digital disclosure is permitted by a regulatory scheme, a voluntary, consistent framework can help companies present product information in a way that enables consumers to readily understand that information. If every manufacturer answers a disclosure mandate with a different design, regulators are left to monitor a patchwork of differing compliance structures. SmartLabel is a voluntary, industry-led standard that gives policymakers something invaluable: a common language they can point to — one that is already accessible, accurate and used more than 25 million times a year.

Consumer Brands has always advocated for uniform, workable and durable regulatory frameworks. A shared standard allows the CPG industry to adapt to potential disclosure mandates while maintaining our commitment to consumer transparency.

The Bottom Line

Transparency is not a competitive advantage to be hoarded — it is a baseline we build together. A brand can build its own tool. However, the templates, standardization of factual information and regular audits allow SmartLabel to create a uniform solution that not only provides familiarity for consumers but remains relevant as the industry moves toward a 2D future.

SmartLabel allows every brand’s packaging to evolve while the consumer experience remains the same.