Currys brand platform helps boost profits with fun ads based on key insights

The Challenge

Selling consumer technology is a highly competitive marketplace, so how do you gain an edge? In the social media age when there are so many alternatives for promoting a brand, Currys turned to advertising. And it paid off – dramatically.

The company created award-winning adverts as part of its Beyond Techspectations campaign, which demonstrated that advertising remains a highly effective way to raise brand awareness, promote products and persuade customers to buy them. Done well, it can transform a business’s image and performance.

In one advert a customer takes Currys’ advice rather literally

With 298 stores across the UK and around 15,000 employees, Currys is the country’s leading tech retailer. However, in recent years it has found itself under pressure.

The pandemic saw a shift to online purchasing, threatening the future of Currys stores when it was clear that the pre-Covid status quo of shopping “in real life” would not return.

The retailer’s marketing team turned to advertising to reach a wider market by tackling the issues that challenged customers when buying technology products online: confusion, stress and a lack of immediate, expert human help.

The human solution

The marketers turned these challenges into the Currys superpower – showing how shop staff would always go the extra mile to assist and advise customers in store.

Currys research had revealed that shopping online for tech left many feeling stressed and even lonely – another reason to demonstrate the store workforce’s customer service skills.

As for advertising, Currys shied away from simply communicating its reliability with tech-heavy messaging. Instead the brand launched witty, light touch campaigns with leading advertising agency AMV BBDO.

Connecting with audiences on TV, in store and on social media, the ads flipped the usual serious tone of tech retail on its head.

The first ads in the Beyond Techspectations campaign launched in 2023. They proved so successful that they were spun out over more than a dozen iterations, each presenting Currys store experts going to absurd lengths to help customers.

Above and beyond for customers

Examples of going above and beyond included a Currys techie popping out of a tub of baked beans in a college canteen to advise students about laptops.

They showcased the expertise of Currys employees in unforgettable ways: staff provided anxiety-wracked customers with “laptop rage therapy”, soothing them with gentle advice, and even group counselling for a customer with a laggy computer.

In the IRL campaign, an advert demonstrated the advantages of the instore experience, where Currys staff help confused die-hard online shoppers. In one scene, an assistant politely reminds a customer there’s no need to swipe as she flips kettles off a shelf.

In another, a checkout worker assures a shopper she can take her product right now after she asks about next-day delivery.

Delivering accessibilty for all

There were more serious iterations as well. One ad, called Sigh of Relief, focused on reaching the 18 million Britons who have hearing loss and the 340,000 registered as blind or partially sighted.

Featuring an audio-describer and British Sign Language interpreter as key characters, it won the 2024 Channel 4 Diversity in Advertising Award, which comes with £1 million in free advertising.

Supporting Sustainability

Another campaign presented Currys’ approach to sustainability. A 2023 study found that half a billion electrical items go to UK landfills every year, making the country the world’s second highest contributor to e-waste per capita.

So Currys seized the initiative. AMV created two trade-in campaigns, Drenched and Ballpit, to support the brand’s Long Live Your Tech recycling and repairs schemes.

The adverts helped position the business at the centre of the UK’s circular economy. Since the campaigns launched, Currys has recycled around 60,000 tonnes of e-waste a year.

The campaign highlighted the brand’s commitment to recycling old electricals

The Results

Currys’ ads have turned in impressive results. Internally, the investment in training raised staff engagement to record levels. Customer perception of Currys’ expertise rose by over 12 per cent. It now has a higher Trustpilot customer satisfaction score than John Lewis.

That shift in perceptions of expertise correlated to a growth in brand preference, cementing Currys’ position as the UK’s preferred tech retailer.

The advertising also had a positive effect on performance. In the last financial year, Currys reported a strengthening set of results, with revenue rising 3 per cent to £8.7 billion and adjusted pre-tax profits up 37 per cent year on year to £162 million.

This has helped secure a 23 per cent share of UK electrical sales for Currys and reinforced the value of having employees on the high street for customers to engage with.

How it paid back

“Currys has reinvigorated the instore tech shopping experience and made a huge positive difference to so many people in the process,” says Advertising Association president Andria Vidler.

“Using humorous and entertaining adverts across a range of platforms has also been a vital ingredient in Currys’ growth in return on investment.

“Their successful strategy to persuade people back into stores has supported hundreds of jobs in those stores, as well as in distribution and customer service centres across the country – making a tangible difference to employees and customers alike.”

Click here to view this story in The Times

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