Forget Centre Court: How Challenger Brands Win Where the Real Action Is

Image credit: Shep McAllister via Unsplash

At Wimbledon, Centre Court gets the cameras. It’s where the royals sit, the famous come to be seen, the world’s best play, and where tradition is upheld in everything from a meticulous approach to lawn care to resplendent fashion and perfectly chilled strawberries.

But if you really want to feel Wimbledon - the energy, the emotion, the powerful wave of a thousand people standing as one - you go to Murray Mound (or Henman Hill, depending on which era you grew up in). That’s where the real magic is.

As marketers, it’s an analogy that we would all do well to remember. Because too many focus on the glitz and glamour of Centre Court, while the relevance they crave lives on Murray Mound.

The Challenger’s Dilemma: You Can’t Buy the Spotlight

As brands gear up to capitalise on summer’s biggest cultural moments - from Wimbledon to  the EUROs, the Tour de France to the British & Irish Lions tour of Australia  - marketers are dusting off the same old playbooks: sponsorship, broadcast slots, advertising boards, logo placement. But most brands can’t afford those routes. And, more importantly, they may no longer need them.

Because the cultural power of these moments doesn’t come from the rights you own, it comes from how you show up in them. It lives in the way fans, followers and communities experience these events. And increasingly, that happens not in the centre but on the fringes - on the Mound, in the stands, in the streets, on the rust-battered courts, in the bars, in the Tifos, in the disused swimming pools…

Challenger brands, in particular, need to reframe how they approach high-awareness moments, particularly as they can offer something far more potent than the “well-trodden path”: the ability to move fast, react with personality and show up where culture is actually happening.

Winning doesn’t mean outspending the competition. It means understanding where the action is really happening and having the agility to show up in ways that feel relevant, not rehearsed.

It’s not about being seen everywhere, it’s about knowing exactly where to be.

Challenger brands can win big during cultural moments, not by chasing the spotlight, but by showing up where the real energy and emotion is unfolding.

Let’s explore how challenger thinking, focusing on proximity over prestige, helps brands cut through the noise and create meaningful moments during high-profile events without high-profile budgets.

Culture Doesn’t Live on Centre Court

Legacy brands dominate the big stages. Simply put, they buy visibility. But culture doesn’t live in the broadcast feed. It lives where fans are sharing, shouting, crying and celebrating, in the places where emotion spills over and becomes contagious.

That’s where challenger brands can thrive. You don’t need to own the screen if you can own the conversation.

Just look at the biggest breakout moment from Wimbledon so far. It’s not a multi-million-pound, highly-polished piece of content, but a £4.25 strawberry and cream sandwich from M&S that’s captured headlines, sparked memes and dominated online conversations - not because of high production value, but because it was playful, unexpected and hits a cultural sweet spot.

The key question is how can we be part of what fans are actually doing during these moments, not what brands wish they were doing? The answer lies in proximity. Not to the cameras, but to the culture.

Take our work for Asahi during the Rugby World Cup. Instead of focusing on the obvious channels, we tapped into a powerful cultural insight: Japan’s rugby spirit of “No Side” - the idea of respect and camaraderie beyond the final whistle. This red thread ran through every activation, resulting in real fan engagement, strong sentiment and standout performance, drawing more eyeballs and attention across channels than sponsors who had spent significantly more.

Why Challenger Brands Don’t Wait for Permission

The traditional route into major moments has always been through permission - paying for the rights, buying the airtime and activating within the official boundaries. But challenger brands operate differently. They move faster, think smarter and find ways to participate on their own terms.

That’s exactly how we approached campaigns like iD Mobile x Transfer Deadline Day. While others stuck to reactive tweets or predictable updates, we embedded iD Mobile into the conversation with an idea rooted in real-time cultural insight. The result? A socially charged campaign that turned a media moment into a brand-building one - without a rights package in sight.

Similarly, with campaigns for Oppo (at Wimbledon) and Sports Direct (at the London Marathon), we didn't try to be official. We aimed to be unmissable.

With Oppo, we put cutting-edge camera tech into the hands of real fans, giving our “Capture Crew” unrivalled access to the tournament and turning their photos into a nationwide campaign in real-time. It made the tech tangible and the brand culturally relevant.

With Sports Direct, we flipped the lens from the runners to the crowd, celebrating the unsung heroes of marathon day – the supporters – through helpful and emotional touchpoints across Strava, social and in-store screens. Rather than spotlighting those competing, it was a heartfelt homage to the people who really make these moments matter.

It’s not just our work that shows how powerful this approach can be. When DASH Water reacted fast and smart to the news cycle and paraded a playful poster outside Prince Harry’s court case that read “Harry doesn’t want the limelight but we do”, it earned the brand national media attention and drove buzz for DASH Lime (delicious!), whilst more recently, the much-hyped Oasis reunion has inspired some brilliantly irreverent takes, including from the likes of Aldi and Lidl. These kinds of activations didn’t rely on official rights, but on cultural awareness, speed and personality.

While broadcasters and sponsors shape the official narrative, the real story often unfolds elsewhere. They belong to the people and communities that live and breathe for these moments. Brands that recognise this can punch well above their weight.

Find the Crowd, Not the Camera

The truth is, you don’t need a Centre Court budget to win a Centre Court moment. You just need to know where the real action is and be smart, nimble and human enough to join it.

In a world where standing still has never cost more, it’s time to stop chasing the spotlight and start standing with the crowd, as this is where you don’t just get noticed, you get remembered.

At Trouble Maker, we have a Challenger Mapping process that we go through with every client to help them find their own unique place. It’s a tool we find crucial to unlocking cultural moments, whether you’re an official partner like Ferrari, or an opportunistic challenger like iD Mobile.

That’s not to say sponsorship doesn’t have value – it absolutely does. Buying the rights gives you a seat at the table and a first wave of visibility. But the true multiplier lies in how you leverage that position - in how you show up in culture, not just in the credits. That’s where earned attention beats paid exposure and where brand stories start to travel further, faster.

Brands win by being close to culture, not close to the cameras.