Scottish tennis coach Judy Murray joined Made in Chelsea star and Candy Kittens founder Jamie Laing for a London filming day, resulting in a collaborative Instagram post that blends sporting credibility with confectionery cool.
Judy Murray does not often show up in a confectionery brand’s marketing plan. However, that is precisely what makes her latest Instagram collaboration with Candy Kittens and Jamie Laing so effective.
The Scottish tennis coach, OBE recipient and mother of Grand Slam champions Jamie and Andy Murray joined Laing for a filming day in London, producing a collaborative Instagram post shared across both their accounts and Candy Kittens’ own channel. On the surface, it looks like a simple content swap. Underneath, it is a smart piece of audience engineering.
A Partnership Built on Contrast
Candy Kittens has spent over a decade positioning itself as the grown-up alternative to traditional sweets. Founded in 2012 by Jamie Laing and Ed Williams, the brand became the UK’s first B Corp certified confectionery company in October 2022, built around plant-powered recipes with no gelatine, no palm oil and no artificial flavourings. It has since expanded rapidly, most recently acquiring Unilever-owned snack brand Graze in a move that signals genuine ambition beyond the sweet aisle.
Laing remains the brand’s most visible asset. As founder and long-time face of the company, he brings built-in credibility every time Candy Kittens does something new. Pairing him with Judy Murray introduces a completely different audience segment: sports fans, parents and a demographic that trusts Murray’s straight-talking, unmistakably Scottish public persona.
That contrast is the whole point. Murray has built her reputation on decades of coaching, including a spell as Great Britain’s Fed Cup captain and her ongoing work through the Judy Murray Foundation, which brings tennis into underserved communities across Scotland. She is warm, funny and famously unfiltered on social media, qualities that translate well into branded content without feeling forced.
Why the Casting Works
Brand partnerships succeed when the talent brings something the brand cannot manufacture on its own. Judy Murray brings trust. Her audience does not associate her with celebrity endorsement culture, which makes her appearance in a lighthearted Candy Kittens video feel like a genuine crossover moment rather than a paid placement.
For Candy Kittens, this matters commercially. The brand has always leaned on humour and self-aware content rather than traditional advertising. Bringing in a figure like Murray, who is instantly recognisable but rarely seen in branded campaigns, generates curiosity. It also broadens the brand’s reach into households and demographics that Laing’s usual content, aimed at a younger, entertainment-savvy audience, may not fully capture.
There is a wider industry lesson here too. As influencer marketing matures, brands increasingly look beyond typical creator casting and towards public figures whose credibility comes from an entirely different world. Sport, business and entertainment crossovers like this one tend to outperform like-for-like influencer pairings precisely because the audiences do not overlap neatly. That unpredictability is what makes people stop scrolling.
The Format: A Filming Day, Not a Studio Shoot
Rather than a static product shot, the collaboration was built around a full filming day in London, with Candy Kittens managing travel and logistics for Murray’s participation. This format, an in-person shoot involving both talent together, produces material that feels more authentic than remotely filmed or separately shot content. Audiences can tell the difference, and engagement data across the industry consistently favours collaborative, in-person creative over stitched-together clips.
The finished result was published as a joint Instagram post across all three accounts, a format that maximises reach without duplicating effort. Each account’s followers see the same core content, tagged and cross-posted, which is one of the more efficient ways to extend a campaign’s visibility without additional production spend.
Borrowing a Beauty Industry Playbook
Cross-generational casting is not new. Skincare brands have used it for years, pairing younger creators with older family members to prove a product works for everyone, not just one age group. Candy Kittens applies the same logic here, with an actual family link as the reel also features Jamie’s mum.
Judy Murray sits at one end of the generational spectrum and Jamie Laing at the other, at least in terms of public image. She built her name in sport and coaching. He built his in reality television and entertainment. Putting them together in the same reel tells a simple story: this is not a brand for one type of person.
Humour does the heavy lifting. Rather than presenting Murray as a straight-faced celebrity cameo, the content leans into the contrast between her direct, dry sense of humour and Laing’s more chaotic on-screen energy with his own mother, followed by the line “My Jamie is the same” from Murray. That comedic pairing is what makes the collaboration feel like a moment rather than an advert. Viewers are laughing along with an unlikely double act, not watching two people read a script.
For Candy Kittens, that is the real win. A brand built on “no nasties” and grown-up sweets needs content that feels playful rather than preachy. Pairing an entertainment figure with someone entirely outside that world, and letting the humour come from their differences, is a low-cost way to signal broad appeal without saying “this product is for everyone” outright.
What This Means for Brand Partnerships Going Into 2026
Candy Kittens’ willingness to bring in talent from outside entertainment reflects a broader shift in how brands think about ambassador casting. Rather than chasing the most obvious influencer for a given demographic, forward-thinking brands are identifying figures with strong, trusted personal brands, regardless of industry, and finding a genuine reason for them to be there.
Judy Murray’s involvement did not need a tennis angle to make sense. It worked because she is a recognisable, likeable personality with an audience that trusts her judgement. That is a lesson worth taking into any 2026 brand partnership strategy: relevance matters more than category overlap.
MN2S facilitated Judy Murray’s involvement in the campaign, connecting Candy Kittens with a talent booking that added credibility and reach beyond the brand’s usual entertainment-first casting.