Strategic Brand Signalling Roundtable

Strategic Brand Signalling: Trade Marks, Advertising, and Body Image Perceptions in the UK 

About the Roundtable 

How do commercial messages shape our perception of beauty and health? Recent regulatory initiatives suggest growing concern about this question. The 2022 House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee investigation revealed concerning impacts that 'online content that promotes an idealised, often doctored and unrealistic body image' has on wellbeing. The investigation called for ‘a comprehensive cross-government strategy’ to tackle body dissatisfaction through education about self-worth and body positivity. It also recommended 'further regulation of advertisements on social media'.

In response, the Government introduced the Online Advertising Programme in 2023, aiming to create a targeted regulatory framework focused on illegal advertising and protecting under-18s online. This included establishing a ministerial-led taskforce to improve evidence gathering on illegal harms and enhance existing industry initiatives. The Online Advertising Taskforce’s 2023-24 progress report highlights collaborative efforts between government and the advertising sector through six industry-led working groups addressing online harms. The Advertising Standards Authority’s 2024 Body Image Review went further, specifically highlighting how cultural and social factors create body image concerns that advertising regulations alone cannot effectively address. This recognition of broader societal influences marks a significant shift in understanding the limitations of current regulatory frameworks.

These developments raise important questions about the relationship between trade mark law and advertising standards. Indeed, whilst trade marks are private property rights, they remain subject to public interest safeguards resembling those in advertising regulation, with both regimes prohibiting messaging likely to deceive or undermine social values such as respect for consumers’ wellbeing and body diversity. This convergence gains significance as trade mark case law has long recognised the advertising and communication functions of modern trade marks. Against this background, could closer alignment between the advertising regulatory framework and trade mark law better protect consumers from messaging that contributes to negative body image?

Our Roundtable, jointly hosted by the University of Warwick and University College London, and forming the inaugural session of the IBIL Trade Mark and Social Justice series, brings together legal practitioners, academics, regulators, marketing and beauty professionals to explore:

• How brand messaging in the health and beauty sector shapes consumer perceptions
• Current regulatory framework for health and beauty product claims
• Grounds for refusing registration of deceptive/immoral trade marks and on public policy grounds
• Potential alignment of standards across advertising regulatory regimes and trade mark law.

The Roundtable will consider issues raised in Dr Luminita Olteanu’s research paper (available here) which compares trade mark law’s approach to deceptiveness with standards in misleading advertising regulations, and contribute further to this important conversation under the Chatham House rule.

The Convenors would like to thank the following institutions whose generosity and support has made this conference possible:

• The School of Law, University of Warwick
• UCL Institute of Brand and Innovation Law (IBIL)

Roundtable photo by Daniel Apodaca on Unsplash.