From January 2026, UK HFSS legislation will ban paid-for online ads for foods high in fat, salt, or sugar and impose a 9pm TV watershed. Esme Robinson, director, platform solutions, Epsilon, looks at the impact on Christmas.
This year’s festive campaigns have landed with a noticeably different texture. The shift is subtle, but it hints clearly at what advertising will look like once HFSS rules take full effect. Some grocers have edged towards compliant creative already. Others are using their final Christmas of full flexibility to lean into indulgence while they still can.
A split season on screen
Asda sets the tone with a Grinch who makes his way through a shop focused on vegetables and value. The only nod to indulgence is a chicken skewer, which remains HFSS compliant. Lidl goes further still. Its ad centres generosity, shows children reaching for fruit and avoids HFSS products entirely, a choice that feels more like January than December.
Sainsbury’s takes a different path. Its BFG-led caper remains full of festive food, but it sits neatly within exemptions such as party food and meal solutions. M&S follows a similar line, turning a traffic jam into a modest gathering built around sharing platters.
And then there is Coca-Cola. The trucks still roll because brand-only advertising remains permitted. A film that avoids identifiable consumption is enough to keep the iconic red lorry on our screens.
This is where the divergence becomes structural. The biggest brands can operate in brand-only mode without losing clarity. Challenger HFSS brands, without deep mental availability, face a harder winter. If you cannot show the product, the only path forward is brand. That can work, but only if it is delivered with far greater control.
How challenger HFSS brands adapt
Once identifiable HFSS products are restricted across TV and paid online, the creative job changes. Appetite appeal, sensory close-ups and product-led storytelling become limited. Brand building, memory cues and characters take centre stage.
That places new weight on control. Connected TV feels like the natural home for compliant brand work, but it is fragmented across broadcasters, apps and devices. Without a unified view of who you are reaching, it is easy to overspend on the same households and miss light buyers entirely.
Here, the ability to recognise real people across CTV environments becomes the difference between efficient brand building and silent waste. Suppressing existing customers, managing frequency and prioritising high-intent audiences are no longer advanced tactics. They are the basics of staying in the game.
The direction of travel is already visible. Partnerships such as Roku and Currys have shown how CTV exposure can be linked directly to retail outcomes, bringing brand and performance closer together. It’s a glimpse of where brandformance is genuinely heading.
Retail media becomes the practical bridge
As AV tightens, retail and owned environments quietly become essential. HFSS restrictions target TV and paid online advertising of identifiable products, not owned or retailer-controlled channels. That leaves a focused set of compliant spaces: in-store screens, in-aisle media, digital out-of-home, retailer audio and CRM environments such as email or push notifications.
These touchpoints are valuable because they keep product and price visible at the moment of choice. They close the gap between brand signal and real-world behaviour, and they carry the level of measurement that marketers need when other channels lose flexibility.
Co-op’s recent research offers proof. A beer brand campaign drove a 12% sales uplift in-store and a 3% uplift at neighbouring retailers, demonstrating retail media’s halo effect on brand strength as well as conversion. That’s the kind of measurable influence advertisers need when above-the-line visibility tightens.
The new model of festive advertising
HFSS will not stop brands building memory or desire, but it will change how they do it. Growth will favour marketers who can recognise real people across fragmented environments, who can control exposure with precision and who can connect compliant touchpoints to measurable outcomes. Identity resolution and AI-powered decisioning anchor that shift. They keep brand investment working even when the creative palette becomes narrower.
The brands that treat this as an opportunity, not a constraint, will find their next Christmas looking surprisingly bright.
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