The Brand Reset your brand didn’t choose >

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Most brand resets are a choice. For confectionery brands, it's been forced.

On 5 January 2026, the Government reset the confectionery category overnight. The HFSS ad ban took the industry's two biggest media channels off the table - no product ads on TV before 9pm, and no paid-for ads online at all, ever.

Pay an influencer to wave a sugary product about? Illegal. Get it wrong and the fine reaches 5% of global turnover. And the impact has been immediate. Linear TV spend on confectionery and snacks fell 61% just in the run-up, according to Ebiquity.

For most brands, a reset is done on their own terms.

It usually starts with a brand looking in the mirror and not liking what it sees. Sometimes that calls for reinvention, sometimes a strategic pivot, sometimes rediscovering lost magic, and sometimes repairing some self-inflicted damage.

All different. But all chosen. Someone picks the moment, finds the courage and the budget, and presses go.

Confectionery got none of that. It got a date.

And the regulations aren't finished. Just this month, a cross-party committee of MPs told the Government to go further - to pull brand and range advertising inside the ban, and outlaw all outdoor HFSS advertising by 2027. The clever workaround everyone reached for first, to advertise the brand, just don't show the product, is already in the crosshairs.

Regardless of where the regulations end, these short-term fixes miss the bigger issue.

This is clearly a media problem. Consumer appetite hasn't changed. Taste still drives buying habits. Shoppers still want the treat. What's shifted is where brands are allowed to talk about it - and those channels are narrowing fast.

But it's a brand challenge too.

When the thing you sell - sugar, salt, the treat itself - is the very thing the regulator has decided is the problem, you can't fix it long term, just by shifting budget from telly to retail media. Confectionery marketers need to go deeper, and ask the real questions - does what we actually stand for, need to change?

Is our brand platform strong enough to survive outside of product advertising?

And ultimately, do we need a brand reset?

If the answer is yes, then an enforced brand reset like this requires smart thinking and clear heads, because there are traps that are easy to fall into. The most tempting is to sprint towards health. Some already are - Mars Wrigley pushing Extra Plus into functional wellness, Haribo leaning on its lower-sugar range to stay on screen. It's an understandable instinct. But the data is blunt: 59% of shoppers say health isn't even a consideration when they buy sweets, and taste is the number one purchase driver by a distance (Vypr, 2026).

Nobody wants a gummy bear that behaves like a multivitamin. The job isn't to become a health brand. It's to win back permission to be a treat, in a world that has decided treats are guilty.

Others are exploring different routes. Werther's has tried an English Heritage partnership to keep nostalgia at its core. Perfetti Van Melle is selling Smint as a way to "reset your day" - a reason to reach for it beyond the mint itself. These are early experiments, not proven playbooks. But they are examples of brands looking for authentic solutions within the brand, rather than reactionary and unconvincing pivots.

For a look into the future, new brands, like Shades by Niko, are essentially HFSS natives. Vegan and halal-certified, created by a YouTuber, and most importantly, born after the category reset, for the world others are scrambling towards.

It points to who's most exposed. The big, single-note incumbents - one product truth, one enormous TV budget, decades of equity built on precisely the thing that's now restricted. The bigger the brand, the heavier it is to turn.

So, what should a confectionery CMO actually do? Well, in the spirit of being useful, here are 5 suggestions:

First, start with the brand, not the comms problem. Ask the harder question first: does what you actually stand for still hold - and can it stand on its own, without the product doing the talking?

Second, make the brand do the work. When you can't show the product, everything else has to pull its weight - not just the brand’s colours, characters and physical assets, but also tone of voice, values, the company you keep and the way you behave.

Third, go wide, not just loud. On-pack, trade presentations, internal comms, CRM. A meaningful reset needs to go everywhere.

Fourth, don't apologise for being a treat. Don't flee into health. It's not a consideration for most, and taste wins by a distance. The job isn't to become a health brand. It's to win back permission to be a treat.

Fifth, move before the next rule. This is a direction of travel, not a one-off. Build owned and earned equity now, while brand advertising is still legal.

Most brands wait for the perfect moment to reset. Confectionery's came uninvited, on a Monday in January, with a fine attached. The category winners won't be the ones mourning the old rules. They'll be the ones who treat the reset they never chose as the one they always needed.

Jamie Williams is Managing Partner of isobel, The Brand Reset Co.