AMV BBDO and Spark Foundry have been awarded one of the industry’s highest honours, the IPA Effectiveness Awards Grand Prix, for a campaign that transformed Currys from a firm threatened by online shopping into the UK’s most-preferred tech retailer, generating £500m in incremental revenue and returning it to sustained growth.
Presented at last night’s IPA Effectiveness Awards ceremony, the Grand Prix-winning paper, The Superpower In-store, tells the story of how Currys confronted an uncomfortable truth. As the UK’s last major bricks-and-mortar technology retailer, it risked becoming increasingly irrelevant as consumers shifted online.
AMV BBDO and Spark Foundry identified a powerful insight at the heart of the challenge. While more consumers were buying technology online, they were increasingly being left to make complex and often expensive purchasing decisions without expert help. The agencies described this as a “crisis of unassisted selling”.
Rather than viewing physical stores as a weakness, the agencies recognised that Currys possessed something online retailers could not easily replicate: thousands of knowledgeable colleagues capable of helping customers navigate increasingly complicated technology choices with confidence.
This insight became the foundation of Beyond Techspectations, a distinctive creative platform that used unexpected humour to celebrate and showcase the expertise of Currys colleagues.
Positioning Currys as the antidote to online confusion and frustration, the campaign turned expert human advice into a compelling point of difference and made colleague expertise the hero of the brand.
Alongside the creative transformation, the agencies helped re-engineer Currys’ marketing approach around long-term return on investment, moving the business beyond short-term supplier-led planning cycles and creating the conditions for sustained growth.
The result was a powerful combination of trust, expertise, humour and long-term thinking that transformed business performance. The campaign generated £500m in incremental revenue over two years, increased market share by 1.1 percentage points, delivered a 44% increase in long-term ROI and returned Currys to growth, cementing its position as the UK’s most-preferred technology retailer.
The IPA Effectiveness Awards entries were rigorously analysed by Technical and Industry judging panels comprising leading strategists and econometricians to evaluate the commercial payback of marketing activity. The final awards were then determined by a panel of client-side marketing leaders chaired by Tesco UK customer director Suzanne Quinn.
She said: “Throughout the judging process, we saw some truly outstanding examples of what can be achieved when exceptional creativity is combined with clear commercial ambition.
“What particularly impressed the judges about the Grand Prix winner was that it went far beyond advertising alone. It demonstrated how marketing can act as a real catalyst for business-wide transformation, earning a seat at the top table and helping drive meaningful change across an organisation.
“What I especially admire about this work is the way it put Currys’ colleagues at the heart of the growth story, turning their expertise into a genuine competitive advantage.
“The standard of entries was exceptionally high, making for a fiercely competitive and inspiring set of awards.”
Other big winners on the night included PHD Media, which scooped Effectiveness Agency of the Year; Omnicom, which landed Effectiveness Company of the Year; and Specsavers for the Broadbent Prize for Best Dedication to Effectiveness.
Meanwhile, Best Not-For-Profit went to Alzheimer’s Society with Medialab, New Commercial Arts and Alzheimer’s Society: How a ‘cultural multiplier’ generated the short and really long-term income to fight dementia; and Best Small Budget was won by NHS Blood and Transplant and VML: Waiting to live: Shining a light on children waiting for a transplant.
In addition The President’s Prize for Creative Effectiveness was scooped by Andrex with Omnicom and PHD Media: Getting Andrex back on a roll: How confronting toilet truths unlocked a bold new chapter of growth; and finally Nationwide with Mother and Wavemaker London went home with the The Channon Prize for Best New Learning for Marketing and finance: Pioneering a new kind of alliance.
IPA Effectiveness Awards convenor of judges Charlie Ebdy, who is chief strategy officer UK at Omnicom Media, added: “In an industry sometimes at pains to convince itself of its own ineffectiveness – where we tell ourselves that people don’t trust advertising, that it cannot or does not work in today’s cultural landscape – the renaissance of Curry’s, in the face of almost impossible odds, is a welcome rejoinder.
“Beyond Techspectations – a singular platform, built on a simple difference, executed with coherence, distinctiveness, and wit in a multitude of media, relentlessly optimised – shows us all what is possible in this new advertising paradigm. Congratulations on a well-deserved IPA Effectiveness Grand Prix.”
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