If you were asked to describe Slazenger, you'd likely say it was a tennis brand.
Or maybe you connect it with golf.
But nowadays there’s a good chance you’d associate it with the bargain bin. Or you just wouldn’t know if it at all.
For a time Slazenger was a major sportswear brand – with a significant reputation for quality and style. Sean Connery’s James Bond even wore a Slazenger jumper while playing golf in Goldfinger.
But in the past 20 or even 30 years, its star has faded considerably – brands like Wilson and Yonex, and Titleist and Callaway have taken over as the dominant brands of tennis and golf respective.
However Slazenger is still going – in fact it’s still the official ball supplier for Wimbledon. But one major difference is that it’s now owned by Frasers Group; Mike Ashley’s company which runs House of Fraser, Flannels and Sports Direct.
And over the years Ashley’s business has made a habit of buying legacy sports brands that had fallen on hard times.
He’s done this with lots of other recognisable names; like Dunlop, Firetrap, Everlast, Jack Wills and LA Gear.
But they weren’t really acquired with the intention of being reinvigorated – instead the idea has been to buy struggling names at a low price and then use that recognisable brand on often low-priced stock that can fill their shop shelves.
Which isn’t necessarily a bad business model – but it’s one that has an expiry date.
Because while the likes of Slazenger might have brand recognition for people in their 40s or older, younger people – like Gen Z – will only recognise it as that cheap brand that sells five pairs of socks for €6.
That means it has little to no cache with them – which is a growing problem.
Why?
Well Gen Zers are those born between 1997 and 2012 – so that means they are now aged between 14 and 29 years old.
And that’s important because, for a long time, consumer brands have tended to focus in on that late teen to early to mid-twenties demographic – whatever generation they may have been.
Because they’re seen to be extremely lucrative.
That’s first and foremost because that age group are the one that has just become fully-fledged consumers – with their own jobs and their own money to spend.
Crucially, though, they’re also a group of consumers that tend to be the most socially active – and the least likely to have major financial commitments that they have to divert that income to. In other words, no pesky kids or mortgages distracting them from all the very important consumption and socialising that they might want to be doing.
So having long been the up-and-coming demographic, Gen Z is now the one that has become – or is on the verge of becoming - a sizable economic force.
Gen Z represents roughly a quarter of the global population – but because of their spending and socialising habits they likely represent a lot more of the economy’s buying power.
And that’s at all levels – a report by Boston Consulting Group found that while Gen Z made up just 4% of global luxury spending before the pandemic (when they were aged 7-22) they’ll account for 25% of that market by 2030 (when they’ll be aged 18 to 33).
But this kind of teens to twenties age group is also particularly important for companies to target – because this is the age where people start to form connections with brands.
Not only are young adults in possession of their own income, they’re also looking to forge their own identities and hobbies and interests. And there’s a good chance that – if you become that 18 year old’s favourite runner brand, or make-up of choice, they'll stick with you for many years to come. Maybe for the rest of their lives.
At the very least, they’ll retain a nostalgic fondness for your brand all the way through to their dotage.
So is Slazenger trying to fix this problem?
Yes, and they’re taking an interesting approach here.
Because they got called out online by a young fashion TikTok-er called Alexei Hamblin – who took aim at what he said was their boring, old-fashioned approach to sports-wear design.
But rather than just ignore that, which is probably what Hamblin expected them to do, they got in touch with him and invited him in to fix the brand.
Alexei is now essentially journalling his process on his social media channels – showing what his plans are, what kind of issues he’s encountering, and asking his followers for their input on what approach he should take.
He suggests that he’s been given full creative control of the shift – though you would imagine Frasers Group hasn’t handed over the keys entirely.
That being said, giving Hamblin even a central role in the process is a smart, and relatively low-risk punt for the brand.
Because the Slazenger brand was already languishing, and it probably doesn’t have a customer-base that will be alienated by even a significant change in direction. And by very publicly bringing someone like Alexei in, they’re signalling to a young demographic that they want their business.
And by detailing the process Alexei is giving Slazenger, Sports Direct and himself lots of publicity. He’s very good at making slickly-produced content, with many of the videos so far getting hundreds of thousands of views and tens of thousands of likes on TikTok alone.
But most importantly, it doesn’t really feel like an ad…
And this is very important for Gen Z…
Yes.
Marketeers are really struggling to figure out how to appeal to this generation – because, as is always the case, they’re very different to what’s come before.
But with Gen Z the difference feels even more pronounced, not least because they’re having a harder time locking down solid jobs, or getting on the housing ladder at the same point that previous generations might have.
That means that their habits and priorities are very different to what’s come before.
They’ve also grown up in the age of social media – which sets a different context to what kind of things attract their interest.
Gen Zers are used to being bombarded by the same traditional-type ads that we all know, but they’re also used to constantly being up-sold by influencers and even the artists they admire.
Everything in commoditised in their world – musicians don’t sell out anymore, because it’s a given that they have a perfume line, apparel brand and sponsorship deal with a soft drink that lines up perfectly with their album launch and tour.
So they’re pretty jaded by anything that feels like a blatant cash-grab – and that’s why authenticity (or at least the appearance of authenticity) matters so much.
When they’re being sold something, they want it to feel like this is a product that the company or person actually believes in, or has a big of weight and meaning behind it.
A really good example of this was not a brand - but Charlie XCX’s Brat album in 2024.
That led to the Brat Summer, which was essentially a rejection of the kind of picture-perfect Insta aesthetic that many influencers and brands had been cultivating up until that point. And that resonated with a lot of Gen Zers – even ones that weren’t necessarily fans of the music.
Of course the reality was that there was a major record label driving the marketing campaign behind Brat – but because you had a very honest, authentic artist as the focal point, it didn’t feel manufactured.
Needless to say the authenticity of Brat Summer didn’t last too long, though… Charlie XCX declared it was over just three months after the album came out – in part because it had been weighed down by brands and influencers trying to jump on the bandwagon.
And most of their attempts to do so fell flat – they were the marketing equivalent of trying to use the someone else’s slang. But a few did manage to hit the right note – in many cases by being tongue in cheek or over the top with what they were doing, so it was clear they were in on the joke.
That kind of approach has been a winning formula for many brands, hasn’t it?
Yes, and this also points to another interesting way that brands are trying to appeal to Gen Z. Because it’s not always through a total rebrand – in many cases it’s around using a different voice in different places.
The American fast food chain Wendy’s is a good example. Its core brand is fairly family-friendly; its TV ads are pretty much what you’d expect, with a focus on the quality of their food and the deals they have available.
But on X (née Twitter) it’s developed this reputation for put downs and snide remarks – often aimed at its rivals, but also directed at regular people that interact with the account.
What it posts is still relatively family friendly – it’s not saying anything outrageous – but people like that it’s also not sticking to the usual corporate-approved script and is having a bit of fun with its audience and branding.
The language learning app Duolingo has done something similar.
Years ago it became the subject of an internet meme years ago around how disappointed its owl mascot – Duo - was when you didn’t do your daily lesson. That then developed into people suggesting that the owl would threaten them with violence if they didn’t log on regularly.
But rather than ignore or even try and quash it, Duolingo got in on the joke and started posting things like 'It’s simple, Spanish or Vanish’.
That’s evolved, or devolved, into its TikTok account posting some really bizarre stuff that it would be impossible to actually explain... none of which has much to do with learning a new language, by the way.
But it has gotten them 17 million followers nonetheless.
Barbie managed to do something similar, didn’t it?
Barbie was a toy line that still sold pretty well – but it wasn’t the dominant force of old, with rivals like Bratz stealing so much of its market.
And while Mattel had tried to reposition Barbie in a more modern way – assuring us she could be a scientist *and* a fashion designer – it had developed an old-fashioned and regressive image that was proving hard to shake.
That was until the Margot Robbie film came out – which dealt with Barbie’s un-feminist image in a very self-aware and tongue-in-cheek way. It then managed to turn that into a story that was seen as very progressive, and quite deep in the way it dealt with existentialism, capitalism, and gender roles.
And that translated through to the tills, with sales of Barbie dolls jumping by 25% on the back of the movie. Mattel reckoned its success generated hundreds of millions of dollars in extra toy and merchandise sales.
Trying to target Gen Z doesn’t always work – does it?
No – because while brands will regularly try and jump onto a trend or bandwagon, doing so without really understanding what’s going on can be dangerous.
And that’s true of attempted Gen Z-friendly pivots, with some brands failing because they’re afraid to veer away from their corporate-approved marketing guide, or because what they do is too much like an ad rather than something genuine.
And sometimes it’s because they just seem to completely miss the point altogether – with a campaign that seems to be drawn up based on what older people think younger consumers want.
The car brand Jaguar is seen as one recent example of this. In late 2024 it unveiled a new brand identity as part of a plan to become all electric by the end of this year.
And the initial ad featured lots of strong colours, abstract shapes, androgenous-looking models and slogans like ‘create exuberant’ and ‘live vivid’.
The one notable omission from the ad was a car.
They even ditched the iconic Jaguar icon and adopted a fairly generic-looking font for their brand name with some suggesting that the branding was more akin to a vape company than a luxury car maker.
The timing didn’t help either – Jaguar's rebrand debuted right around the time of Donald Trump’s 2024 election win, which meant it got caught up in the US culture wars and the rejection among the right of what they claimed to be ‘corporate wokeism’.
It should be said, though, as things stand Jaguar have stuck with the new look. So as misguided as the reveal may have been, they still seem confident it was the right thing to do.
