The UK FMCG landscape is shifting faster than most brand planning cycles can keep up with. Here are three things on our radar that we think every marketer in the space should be across.

1. TikTok Shop is a checkout, not an awareness channel

For a long time, the conversation around TikTok was about reach. Brand awareness. Getting your product in front of a younger audience. That conversation is over.

93% of UK TikTok users engage with TikTok Shop. 88% say they've discovered a new brand there. It was the fastest-growing online sales platform in the UK in 2025 - Black Friday up 50% year on year, 27 items sold per second.

M&S, Clarks, Samsung, Sainsbury's, Lidl and Walkers are already on it.

This isn't a channel you monitor from the sidelines anymore. It's a shelf. And like any shelf, your product either earns its place or it doesn't. The difference is that on TikTok, you have about three seconds to make that case - no packaging to pick up, no eye-level advantage, no friendly retail display.

Clear claims. Fast payoff. A product that sells itself in a scroll.

If your TikTok strategy is still built around brand awareness, it might be time to rebuild it around conversion.

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2. GLP-1 is already reshaping the UK shopping basket

This one is moving faster than most people realise.

1 in 10 British adults is currently taking a weight-loss drug or planning to. Social mentions of GLP-1 in the UK are up 237% year on year. Five UK grocery categories are already showing volume decline.

The brands responding fastest aren't waiting for the trend to peak. They're leaning into it - higher-protein lines, calorie-conscious formats, reformulated everyday staples built for a consumer who's eating less but thinking more carefully about what they eat.

The instinct to wait and see is understandable. But the shift is already happening in the basket. The consumers are already there. What's still catching up is the product range.

Brands that reformulate and reposition now will be ahead of a mainstream conversation that hasn't fully arrived yet. That's the window.

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3. The pre-family shopper is FMCG's biggest untapped opportunity

The UK birth rate has hit 1.4 children per woman - the lowest on record. Couples are having children later. That means a longer stretch of adult life with dual incomes, no kids, smaller households, and spending patterns that look very different from the family-of-four most FMCG innovation pipelines are built around.

Pre-family consumers are 15% more likely to treat themselves and 9% more likely to grab a drink on the go. They shop more spontaneously, spend more per item, and aren't looking for the family-size value pack.

Yet walk down most supermarket aisles and the implicit target is still the weekly family shop.

The opportunity is in formats, occasions, and messages designed specifically for this consumer - single-serve, on-the-go, indulgent, convenient. Not as an afterthought, but as a deliberate growth strategy aimed at the segment that's actually getting bigger.

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Source: Food & Drink Expo sessions (The Grocer Stage) - From Scroll to Sale: TikTok Growth, Game On: Competing with the Biggest Food Trends, and The Convenience Shopper, April 2026.