Inside Huel's European marketing: Localisation, regulation and growth

Huel offers a useful live example of the challenges faced by food brands scaling into new markets. The brand has been acquired by Danone, with both sides framing the deal as a way to accelerate international expansion. Its European campaign runs on a challenging cultural concept, "for your inconvenient meals". And it recently had an advert pulled in the UK by the advertising regulator, the ASA.

Here is our take on what's working, what's not and how to solve it if you are facing similar challenges.

How Huel's brand shows up across European markets

Huel is positioned as being for your inconvenient meals, a challenging concept to take across markets because what you define as an "inconvenient" meal varies culturally. Our language team looked into how the concept has been adapted across Huel's markets.

• The Spanish option works well with "for those meals you can't enjoy calmly" (Para esas comidas que no puedes disfrutar con calma), moving the problem from the meal to the person's schedule.
• Similarly, Italy's localisation works well with "for meals done on the run" (Per i pasti fatti di corsa), which shifts the idea to speed and sounds genuinely native.
• However, the French version stayed closer to the English with "for your untimely meals" (Pour vos repas inopportuns). Inopportuns carries a clearly negative sense, and in a country where mealtimes hold a protected place in daily life, it risks making the product look like a poor substitute for a proper meal.

There were also inconsistencies in always-on content. As of October 2026, Germany has its own site with fully localised content, whereas France, Spain and Italy share a single translated European template with some English copy sitting on live pages. On the Spanish blog, for example, some articles carry Spanish titles but open in English. One headed "Mitos comunes sobre nutrición" begins with an English introduction.

Overall, Huel's brand is showing up with some inconsistencies across European markets, and that matters more than it might appear. In a new market there is no existing familiarity to fall back on, so every touchpoint is a first impression. Consistency is what turns a series of those impressions into a brand that means something. When each one says something slightly different, you lose a crucial opportunity to resonate with new consumers.

What Huel's ASA ruling points to, and the risk across Europe

Another challenge for brands scaling into new markets is the regulatory environment. That is true in every category, but food is one of the most tightly regulated, and any claims attract particular scrutiny. That UK advert was pulled because the ASA found the creative made a health claim that didn't meet the rules and implied the product could replace a balanced diet. In our experience, when a scaling brand has an advert pulled like this, it is often because there is a gap in the process designed to catch it. Paid media often goes through some form of clearance, though not in every instance or market, and organic content often doesn't. Both should be going through an internal compliance check regardless, because a regulator will flag a problem either way once the content is live.

In one market, that is something you fix and move on from, but each new market brings its own rules and nuances, so there is more for an unchecked process to miss. Across the EU, evidence isn't enough: health claims must be on the EU's authorised list and fit each market's local advertising rules, even if the substantiation backs them up. What the brand is saying may be true but fall short of the local requirements. Here are a few examples of how food marketing is regulated differently across Huel's markets:

• France: Pre-clearance is needed for TV and certain on-demand adverts, so getting those approved is typically harder than elsewhere. There are also strict rules around the creative, such as not showing anyone eating in front of a screen at home, including influencers and fictional characters, and making sure any full meal shown on screen is balanced.
• Germany: Adverts aimed at under-14s should not imply that any single food is essential to a complete meal.
• Italy: Extra guidance applies to supplements and dietary products, including avoiding any suggestion of medical benefits or effortless results.
• Spain: A separate framework covers advertising to children and requires a pre-check on media, audience and claims. Clearance isn't always optional: advertisers with an agreement under the PAOS code can be required to have all their broadcast, VOD and online advertising reviewed. Stations can also still refuse an advert.

These subtle differences in how each country interprets the same advert all need accounting for at the concepting stage, not after the advert is made. The ASA ruling itself is limited to the UK, but a process gap that lets something through at home will magnify as you add markets.

Three governance checks for brands scaling into new markets

An inconsistent brand across markets and adverts getting pulled might look like different problems, but in our experience they trace back to the same root cause: the ability of a brand to manage the complexity of marketing in multiple markets at once.

The answer is governance built for multiple markets, either built in-house or through a partner. Here are three checks worth having in place for any brand scaling into new markets. Each one asks two questions: can this run here, and does it work here?

1. At concept, before the idea is committed to.
   Will it pass clearance in every market you plan to use it in? Culturally, does the thought land, or does it need rebuilding in one of them? This is the cheapest place to find out there's a problem, before any production begins.
2. At production, before the money goes in.
   Are the claims substantiated for each market, with the right evidence behind them? And is the local adaptation being made by someone who knows the market, not just the language?
3. Before launch, as a final check.
   Does the live asset still match what was approved, in every market and every language? And has any organic content being boosted as paid passed the same approval gate?

Huel will be inheriting Danone's governance policies as it joins a much larger marketing organisation, which comes with its own trade-offs: less flexibility and less of the speed that got it here in the first place.

If you are a scaling brand and want to keep that pace, there is another route. Building the governance to operate confidently across markets, without giving up the flexibility of being an independent challenger brand, is exactly what Freedman helps brands do.

Scaling into new markets and want to talk it through? Get in touch.