Brandoscope have opened the doors to their self-titled new website. The site is an offer by a Berlin-based firm and available in multiple European languages. It offers a directory of organic production standards and firms and links both: while searching for a standard, the user is presented with direct links to firms adhering to it. Vice versa, a visitor looking for a specific brand will be presented with the standards the respective firm is publicly abiding by.

While the site’s directories are still incomplete with icons and logos missing and only a limited number of (German) firms being available for research, the goal is clear. It is considered to be beneficial to the individual customer to clearly communicate which brands obey to which standardized regulations in the production of foodstuffs or other goods.

Brandoscope certainly is a good idea in principle. But I wonder if it will take root. Does it really hold value for the average customer to be able to look up such data before or after making a purchase? Sure, people do want to be sure more often than ever before that brands abide by certain regulations for socially and economically acceptable behavior. But do they also want to verify this while there are professional organisations whose job it is to ensure such behavior in the first place? After all, we have online and offline magazines that test products in multiple dimensions.

I also fear that Brandoscope would have to supply more and more detailed informationon what the seals actually mean to offer real value. At the moment, such information is limited to some basic, verbose self-description in narrative form.

There are others who try to communicate the multidimensional quality of products such as Soil & More, or Bio mit Gesicht in Germany. From what I know, the principle of allowing customers to look up detailed about a firm’s social or environmental behavior does not work well at least in part because of the “offline-online-gap”, the need to type in some data online to get to the information that people what to be able to rely on but not necessarily research themselves.

To some extent Goodguide is different. For once because they offer highly detailed science-based insight gained through “investigative” research. But the system also works better because they have a mobile application for iPhones and other devices that can even read barcodes.

It may work because it minimizes the hassles of bridging the “offline-online-gap”. If it works in the long run may be less sure.

The idea to offer additional background information has been done by others. Smi. It is seldomly used because of the offline-online bridge. People don’t use it possibly because they expect others to take care.