The Prime Minister’s obesity strategy and its impact on you as marketers
Earlier this week the Prime Minister announced a 9pm watershed for TV and a total ban for online advertising of HFSS products as part of his obesity strategy.
This announcement has a wide ranging impact on you and we want to provide you and your agencies with an opportunity to discuss the plans, the timescale for their implementation, what products are covered and could be covered in the future and the wider potential for bans to become to the norm.
We’ll also set out the ISBA response and the plan going forwards to provide mitigation.
Join James Barge, Director of Public Policy and representatives of the IPA and AA for this hour long discussion.
As a reminder, the announcement by the Government on Monday included the following:
- Banning HFSS adverts – new laws will ban the advertising of food high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) on television and online before 9pm. Ahead of this, the Government will also hold a ‘new short’ consultation on whether the ban on online adverts for HFSS, should apply at all times of day. The aim is to achieve this by the end of 2022 at the latest.
- Ending BOGOF promotions – new legislation will restrict the promotion of foods high in fat, sugar, such as ‘buy one get one free’ offers. There will also be a ban on these items being placed in prominent locations in stores, such as at checkouts and entrances, and online.
- Calorie labelling – new laws will require large restaurants, cafes and takeaways with more than 250 employees to add calorie labels to the food they sell.
- Alcohol calorie labelling - a new consultation will be launched before the end of the year on plans to provide calorie labelling on alcohol.
- Expanding NHS services – weight management services will be expanded so more people get the support they need to lose weight.
- Front of pack nutritional labelling - They will launch a consultation to gather views and evidence on the current ‘traffic light’ labelling system to learn more about how this is being used by consumers and industry, compared to international examples.