Slazenger’s first campaign under 23-year-old creative director Alexei Hamblin is a 43-minute comedy film built around a bid to break the 2010 record for the longest tennis match, with cameos from Richard Branson and Mark Clattenburg.
Slazenger has released the first campaign made under Alexei Hamblin, the 23-year-old creative director (yes, 23 is not a typo) appointed to lead the racquet sports and golf brand’s repositioning. The 43-minute film (yes, 43, this is not a typo either) centers on an attempt by Hamblin and Slazenger’s newly appointed head of marketing, Joel Taberner, to break the record for the longest tennis match ever played, a mark set in 2010 at 11 hours and five minutes.
A comedy-format film is an unusual vehicle for a brand with Slazenger’s history, and this is arguably the point. Slazenger has supplied the official ball to Wimbledon since 1902, which Slazenger describes as the longest-running partnership in sporting history, and it produces equipment well beyond tennis, including cricket, swimming, hockey and golf gear. The brand has also been building a retro-inspired apparel line, Slazenger Heritage: per trade reporting, its core sales base runs through the UK, continental Europe and India, largely as an accessible, entry-level sporting goods option under Frasers Group.
The TikTok critic who became the brand’s future
That’s the background. What sits in the foreground is a campaign built entirely around internet-native humor and Gen Z’s irreverent way of engaging with brands, even those with a century of history. The center of the campaign is a film that combines an endurance challenge with comedy-sketch elements, opening with Hamblin’s admission, in his own words, that he is not good at tennis.
The rest of the film tells the story of the record attempt: a hilarious, poorly played match whose most interesting moments come from an unexpected lineup of cameo appearances — entrepreneur Richard Branson, former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg, commentator Clive Tyldesley and internet personalities Stephen Tries, Chabuddy G and Chi with A C. The full film is live on YouTube, with shorter clips scheduled across Slazenger’s and Hamblin’s own Instagram, TikTok and YouTube accounts through July.
Hamblin’s route into the job is itself a story. He built a following on TikTok as “The Slazenger Guy,” a series in which he publicly critiqued the brand for drifting from its standing as a leading British sports name. That series brought him to the attention of Michael Murray, chief executive of Frasers Group, Slazenger’s parent company, who brought Hamblin in initially to work behind the scenes before naming him creative director.
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His first visible output was a nine-piece Off-Court menswear collection launched in spring 2026, blending tennis heritage with streetwear. The new campaign, by contrast, speaks for the Slazenger brand as a whole, aimed at a new generation of consumers comfortable with satire. But in doing so, it is more tradition-aware than it might first appear: these surreal 43 minutes may remind viewers over 50 of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
