Morrisons Serves Up a “Grand Slam” Moment for Wimbledon, and DOOH Is Doing the Heavy Lifting
There’s something satisfying about a brand finally connecting a product to a cultural moment instead of just slapping a logo near it. That’s exactly what Morrisons has done this Wimbledon season, and the out-of-home execution is worth a closer look.
The idea: a doughnut that actually earns its place at Wimbledon
Morrisons has launched a limited-edition Grand Slam Doughnut through its Market Street bakery counters, filled with British strawberries and cream and prepared fresh in-store. It’s a smart bit of product thinking on its own; strawberries and cream is practically shorthand for Wimbledon in the UK, so building a bakery item around that association gives the campaign a genuine reason to exist rather than a forced tie-in.
The creative, developed by Leo UK, builds the whole campaign around a single idea: the “perfect serve.” The hero visual shows a Morrisons Market Street baker launching the doughnut skyward with the poise of a Centre Court champion, paired with the line “Our bakers have mastered the perfect serve.” It’s a simple pun, but it does exactly what good OOH copy should do: land in under two seconds without needing explanation.
Where it gets interesting: the OOH van as a live commentator
Static billboards can only say one thing at a time, which is why the most interesting part of this campaign isn’t the hero poster, it’s the mobile media van pictured driving through Wimbledon Village. Rather than parking one message for the duration of the tournament, Morrisons is running advertising vans around the Wimbledon grounds with messaging updated in real time to reflect matches, players and other developments throughout the championships.
That’s a meaningful shift from “OOH as a billboard” to “OOH as a live channel.” A doughnut ad that can react to a match point or a surprise upset gives people on the street a reason to actually look at it twice, rather than filtering it out as background noise. The image circulating from Wimbledon Village, showing the mobile screen parked outside the Rose & Crown pub with its tennis-ball mural, captures the intent well: this isn’t advertising dropped into the location, it’s advertising that feels like part of the event.
From street to stage: The Bakers Championships
The campaign doesn’t stop at OOH. On 7 July, Leo UK is staging The Bakers Championships, a live activation outside the Morrisons store in Wimbledon Piazza. The format borrows tennis’s own theatre: members of the public go head-to-head against Morrisons’ bakery staff in a timed doughnut-filling challenge, judged by a “Baker Umpire” perched in an actual umpire’s chair. Anyone who beats the baker walks away with a £20 Morrisons voucher, and every participant keeps the doughnut they make.
It’s a neat piece of experiential design because it converts the DOOH campaign’s tagline into something people can physically do, rather than just read. The “perfect serve” stops being a slogan and becomes a challenge you can win or lose in front of a crowd.
The team behind it
- Client: Morrisons
- Creative agency: Leo UK
- Chief Creative Officer: Mark Elwood
- Executive Creative Director: Andy Long
- Creative Directors: Kimberley Gill, Emily Drake
- Social content: Fabric
- Media planning and buying: Zenith UK
Kimberley Gill, Creative Director at Leo UK, described the concept as putting Morrisons’ own bakers front and centre, piping bag in hand, on their way to Wimbledon for the live challenge.
Why this campaign is worth watching
For anyone working in retail marketing or OOH planning, there are three takeaways here:
- Product-led creative ages better than logo-led creative. The doughnut itself is the joke, the visual, and the reason for the tournament tie-in, all at once.
- Real-time OOH is becoming table stakes for event marketing. A static poster near Wimbledon says “we’re relevant.” A van reacting to live match results says “we’re paying attention,” which is a very different, more credible signal to a crowd that’s there for the event itself.
- Experiential closes the loop that OOH opens. The van and posters generate attention; The Bakers Championships gives people something to actually participate in and photograph, extending the campaign’s life on social well past the tournament dates.
The campaign runs across Wimbledon and London for the duration of the championships.
