Fresh HFSS crackdown puts branding on the top table

The food and drink sector has adapted to the reality of Less Healthy Foods (LHF) advertising regulations, which it voluntarily adopted in October 2025, three months before the official implementation date. However, it may soon be facing yet another adjustment. 

With the Government considering a revised Nutrient Profiling Model for existing advertising and promotional restrictions, significantly more products could be brought within scope, creating more uncertainty for brands, agencies and media owners who have already adjusted to the existing framework.

While much of the discussion has centred around an issue of compliance, the wider implications could be far reaching. The Advertising Association has suggested that as much as £1bn in annual advertising spend will be affected by the proposed changes. This figure poses a much wider question than simply whether brands can advertise certain products: what happens to advertising investment when its traditional routes become restricted?

Advertising budgets rarely stand still
Despite an ever-changing regulatory environment, brands still need to retain awareness, drive consideration, and support growth.

When the first HFSS regulations arrived, advertisers initially acted cautiously while assessing their portfolios and campaigns. Although confidence has since returned, further restrictions could again prompt businesses to reconsider where they invest.

Historically, new regulation does not cause marketing budgets to disappear; instead, they are redistributed.

If certain products become harder to promote through TV and paid digital channels, marketers will inevitably begin to look elsewhere in the drive to deliver reach and engagement. Channels such as cinema, digital out-of-home, audio, and other brand-building environments could become increasingly attractive alternatives.

This raises another important question. If advertising investment begins flowing at scale into a smaller pool of channels – over time, those environments may also start to attract greater regulatory attention.

This means that the conversation can no longer solely focus on where displaced spend ends up – instead, it is about how the industry collectively ensures that brands can continue to communicate with audiences in a responsible, measurable, and effective way.

A shift from product marketing to brand marketing
One of the more significant changes could be how food and beverage brands approach creativity and communications.

Traditionally, a large proportion of campaigns in the category revolve around products. That means anything from highlighting a new flavour to showcasing a seasonal range. Promoting offers or celebrating a specific occasion. As more products potentially fall within the scope of wider restrictions, this style of advertising becomes increasingly challenging to execute.

As a result, brands will need to find other selling points. One which could prove successful is placing greater emphasis on corporate identity, heritage, values and wider brand narratives.

Rather than focus on a particular product, marketers should pivot to building campaigns upon the qualities that make a brand distinctive, relevant, and memorable. The product remains important but no longer needs to be the centre of every communication.

This shift places greater emphasis on quality storytelling, premium content environments, and creative strategies designed to build long-term brand equity, rather than instantaneous demand for a product.

That also has implications for planning. Audience targeting and media efficiency will remain important, but marketers will increasingly need to balance these against regulation, creative agility, and brand recall.

In other words, campaign planning will become as much about what can be communicated as it is about the audience.

Might tougher rules accelerate reformulation?
The potential impact also extends beyond media planning and advertising strategy. If restrictions make it harder to promote certain products, brands may look to product innovation as a route towards new marketing opportunities. Reformulation is not only about altering recipes; it can fundamentally change what a brand can say, show, and emphasise through its advertising.

Of course, product changes can become campaign opportunities in  themselves. Brands that reduce fat, sugar and salt can pivot their creative messaging towards health, ingredient quality and transparency – translated through new packaging, reworked brand identities and marketing strategies designed to highlight healthier, compliant credentials.

Marks & Spencer’s ‘Only’ ingredients range is a prime example of this change in direction, with consumers responding positively to the range which uses the minimal number of ingredients for store-cupboard essentials.

The reality for most brands is generally not so simple. The investment required for reformulation is great, and redeveloping recipes is just one component. Redesigning packaging, developing new campaigns and repositioning products in a consumer’s mind takes time and budget. Large FMCG businesses are naturally better equipped to absorb these costs and can move with agility. Challenger brands and independent manufacturers may face more stumbling blocks.

So while regulation aims to influence consumer behaviour, it may also influence how brands choose to advertise, compete and differentiate themselves. In that environment, adaptability becomes more than an operational advantage, but a marketing one as well.

Regulation is now a business issue, not just one of compliance
Perhaps the biggest change is the role that regulation now plays within the decision-making process of the business cycle. Historically, HFSS requirements were viewed as a compliance challenge, sitting with legal teams, media planners, and regulatory specialists. Today, the influence of regulation extends far further.

Regulation now has the capacity to influence product development, marketing strategy, creative execution, media investment and long-term brand alignment.

For advertisers, the most effective response will most likely be to build flexibility into planning from the outset. This means identifying potential risk early, developing creative approaches that work at both brand and product levels, diversifying media strategy, and preparing for future challenges before they present themselves. If recent years have shown the industry anything, it’s that regulation keeps on coming.

The challenge for brands is not to find a new home for advertising investment, but to ensure that businesses can continue to build visibility, relevance and preference among consumers, wherever investment moves.

While the rules change, the need for brands to be seen, chosen, and remembered – remains exactly the same. Advertising has always been able to adapt to evolving market conditions – the latest HFSS proposals are just another test of the industry and its ability to evolve.

Sarah Tsirkas is retail industry director at Teads UK