How UK Startups Can Market Food Brands After the Ad Ban

Most founders treat regulation like a wall. The smarter move is to treat it like a map.

As of January 2026, the UK’s stricter rules on junk food advertising (especially online) have shifted the playing field for food and drink brands. Big FMCG teams are already reworking their playbooks. For British startups and scaleups, this is a rare opening: when incumbents get constrained, smaller brands can outmanoeuvre them with sharper positioning, better storytelling, and faster experimentation.

This post is part of the Startup Marketing United Kingdom series, and it’s written for teams who need growth without relying on the easiest paid media routes. If you sell (or plan to sell) products that could fall under HFSS rules, you need a marketing engine that doesn’t collapse when targeting gets restricted.

What the UK junk food ad ban changes (in plain English)

The practical change is simple: product-led performance marketing becomes harder and riskier for HFSS-adjacent brands. When restrictions tighten—particularly online—brands can’t depend on the old formula of “show product, target audience, retarget clickers, repeat.”

For startups, the knock-on effects are predictable:

• Higher compliance overhead: creatives, claims, placements, and targeting need more scrutiny.
• Less efficient acquisition: targeting limitations and inventory constraints can push up CAC.
• More pressure on brand: if you can’t micro-target your way out, your brand has to do more work.

Here’s the stance I’ll take: this doesn’t kill growth—it kills lazy growth. It rewards brands that build demand before the click.

Why this hits startups differently than big FMCG

Big FMCG can absorb inefficiency. They can run broad awareness for months, sponsor huge properties, and wait.

Startups don’t get that luxury. You need:

• faster learning cycles
• clearer creative strategy
• channels that compound (SEO, email, community)

That’s why the best response isn’t “find a workaround.” It’s build a resilient marketing mix that works even when targeting is blunt.

The opportunity: first-mover advantage in “restricted” marketing

When the rules tighten, most brands do one of two things:

1. go quiet because they’re unsure what’s allowed
2. keep spending but with safer, blander creative

Both create whitespace.

A startup that can stay compliant and memorable wins disproportionate attention. In practice, that means shifting from “buy now” messaging to distinctive brand storytelling—the kind that works on connected TV, contextual display, creator content, retail media, and organic search.

Snippet-worthy truth: When ads get restricted, the brand that’s easiest to remember becomes the brand that’s easiest to buy.

What “pivoting to storytelling” actually looks like

“Storytelling” gets abused as a vague brief. For a food or drink startup in 2026, it should be specific:

• Problem-led narratives: what moment does your product serve? (3pm slump, post-gym hunger, lunchbox battles)
• Value-led differentiation: why you exist beyond flavour (ingredient standards, sourcing, functional benefits, portion design)
• Identity cues: consistent colours, pack shapes, sonic cues, taglines, founder voice

If you’re thinking, “But we need conversions,” you’re right. The point is to create conversion-ready demand that doesn’t rely on precision targeting.

A compliant growth playbook for UK food and drink startups

The aim is to keep growth moving while building assets you won’t lose to policy changes. Here are five approaches that work particularly well for early-stage teams.

1) Build a brand world people can enter (not just a product page)

If your marketing is only “product + price + promo,” you’ll struggle as restrictions rise.

What works better is a brand world: a set of ideas, visuals, and messages that create familiarity fast.

Practical steps:

• Create a one-page brand narrative: origin, enemy, customer moment, proof.
• Define 3 memory cues you will repeat everywhere (colour, line, character, sound).
• Make your homepage answer three questions in 10 seconds:
  1. What is it?
  2. Who is it for?
  3. Why should I trust you?

If you nail this, connected TV and broad display become viable earlier than you’d expect because people can recognise you across touchpoints.

2) Use connected TV for reach, then let search and retail do the closing

As online targeting tightens, more brands will lean into connected TV (CTV) and other premium video environments because they’re strong on reach and brand-building.

Startups often dismiss CTV as “too expensive,” but the economics change when:

• performance CPMs rise
• retargeting pools shrink
• brand search becomes the cheapest high-intent channel you have

A workable startup pattern:

1. Run short flights of CTV with one clear idea (not five claims).
2. Track brand search lift and direct traffic (even basic trendlines help).
3. Ensure you own the “last click” via:
   • SEO for “best [category] UK” and “[brand] reviews”
   • retailer search optimisation (Tesco/Asda/Sainsbury’s or category-specific marketplaces)
   • email capture with a credible offer (recipes, challenges, early drops)

If CTV feels like a leap, test the same creative via YouTube on broader targeting and measure branded demand.

3) Shift from audience targeting to contextual targeting

When you can’t rely on hyper-specific audience segments, context becomes your targeting. This is where smaller brands can move quickly.

Examples that tend to stay effective:

• placements around fitness routines, meal prep, parenting, budget cooking, healthy swaps, student meals
• partnerships with publishers or creators whose content already sits in the right moment

Contextual also forces better creative. If your ad appears next to “packed lunch ideas,” your message should speak to that scenario, not a generic product pitch.

4) Turn creators into your R&D and your media channel

Creators aren’t just distribution—they’re feedback loops.

A strong creator programme gives you:

• compliant-ish narratives anchored in real usage moments
• dozens of creative variants without your team producing everything
• language that customers actually use (which improves your landing pages and SEO)

How I’ve seen early-stage teams make this work without burning cash:

• Start with 15–30 micro-creators (high trust, lower cost)
• Brief them on the moment, not the script
• Build a “creator library” so you can reuse top-performing hooks across paid social, PDPs, and email

A simple KPI stack:

• hook rate (first 2–3 seconds retention)
• saves/shares (signal of real interest)
• branded search or retailer search lift during creator bursts

5) Make packaging and retail placement do more of the marketing

If ads get harder, your product in the wild becomes your billboard. For FMCG, packaging is media.

Startup moves that pay off:

• Put the “why” on pack (one sentence customers repeat)
• Make the pack unmistakable from 2 metres away
• Use QR codes for utility, not gimmicks (recipes, routines, sourcing proof)
• Run retail promotions that build habit (multi-buy bundles, timed challenges)

This is also where brand storytelling matters. If someone sees you once on CTV and later on a shelf, recognition closes the gap.

The metrics to watch when performance ads get restricted

If your dashboards only track last-click ROAS, you’ll make panicked decisions in a restricted ad landscape.

Replace “did this ad convert?” with “did this ad create demand we can capture?”

A practical measurement set for startups:

• Branded search volume (Google Search Console + trendlines)
• Direct traffic share (analytics)
• New vs returning visitors (are you building familiarity?)
• Email/SMS opt-in rate (your owned audience)
• Retail search rank and share of shelf where relevant
• Creative diagnostics: hook rate, view-through rate, save/share rate

Snippet-worthy truth: When targeting gets worse, measurement has to get better.

Common questions founders ask (and straight answers)

“Can we just switch budgets from social to influencers and call it a day?”

No. Influencers without a brand strategy become expensive sampling. You need a repeatable message, a clear customer moment, and a way to capture demand (search, email, retail).

“What if our product isn’t HFSS, but we’re in the same category?”

Then you have an advantage, but only if you communicate it clearly and responsibly. Build creative around permissible claims and proof, and expect increased scrutiny anyway because platforms often apply broad category caution.

“Do we need a compliance expert?”

If you’re scaling spend, yes—at least part-time or via an agency partner. The cost of rejected campaigns, forced takedowns, or brand damage will be higher than the cost of getting advice early.

What smart UK startups should do this quarter

Start with actions that compound and don’t depend on perfect targeting.

1. Audit your creatives: how many are “product on background + offer”? Aim to cut that share.
2. Write your brand narrative (one page) and align founders, growth, and creative on it.
3. Build a demand capture loop: SEO + email + retail search coverage.
4. Test one broad reach channel (CTV, YouTube, contextual display) with a single strong idea.
5. Invest in creative iteration: weekly testing beats monthly big-bang launches.

Regulation is forcing FMCG to get more creative. Startups can get there faster because you don’t have legacy playbooks to protect.

The question that matters now isn’t “How do we advertise around the rules?” It’s: What brand would still grow if paid targeting disappeared for 90 days?