Currys, AMV BBDO and Spark Foundry Win IPA Effectiveness Grand Prix With £500m Proof
Updated: 7 days ago
TL;DR: Currys, with AMV BBDO and Spark Foundry, won the 2026 IPA Effectiveness Awards Grand Prix for 'Beyond Techspectations', credited with £500m in incremental revenue over two years.
Currys Converts Shop-Floor Service Into £500m
Currys, creative agency AMV BBDO and media agency Spark Foundry have won the Grand Prix at the 2026 IPA Effectiveness Awards for their 'Beyond Techspectations' campaign. The judges credited the work with £500m in incremental revenue across two years.
The campaign also lifted market share by 1.1 percentage points and delivered a 44% improvement in long-term return on investment. Those are the kinds of numbers a finance director reads twice, and they are exactly what the IPA's forensic judging process is designed to verify.
What makes the win notable is not the size of the figure but the source of it. Currys did not buy its growth with deeper discounts. It argued its way to it.
Repositioning the Colleague, Not the Price
The strategic bet was unusual. Rather than chase online-only rivals on price, Currys tackled what it called the 'crisis of unassisted selling' and put its in-store colleagues back at the centre of the proposition.
In a category where pure-play electronics sellers compete on frictionless checkout, Currys wagered that expert human help is the one thing a warehouse cannot replicate. The results suggest shoppers agreed, and paid for the reassurance.
It is a reminder that a point of difference does not have to be a product feature. Sometimes it is the people you already employ, reframed as the reason to choose you.
The Rest of the Honours Board
Omnicom was named Effectiveness Company of the Year and PHD Media took Effectiveness Agency of the Year, underlining how the holding groups now market their own proof of performance as hard as any client campaign.
Elsewhere, Nationwide, with Mother and Wavemaker, won the Channon Prize; Specsavers took the Broadbent; Andrex the President's Award; and NHS Blood and Transplant, via VML, won Best Small Budget. The judging panel was chaired by Tesco UK customer director Suzanne Quinn.
The spread of winners, from banks to tissue brands to blood donation, shows effectiveness is a discipline, not a sector.
The Marketing Minute Read
The IPA Effectiveness Awards remain the most rigorous proof that advertising drives commercial results, because entrants must isolate the advertising effect from price, distribution and everything else. A retail winner built on service rather than discounting is a useful counterweight to the reflex of pure performance marketing.
Our borrowable framework is three steps: find the capability a competitor structurally cannot copy, build the brand story around customers feeling it, then measure the long-term revenue it defends rather than the short-term clicks it generates.
For any business, the lesson is to audit what you already own before you reach for the discount lever. The most defensible growth often comes from telling a truer story about yourself.
Quick FAQ
Who won the 2026 IPA Effectiveness Awards Grand Prix?
Currys, with creative agency AMV BBDO and media agency Spark Foundry, won the Grand Prix for its 'Beyond Techspectations' campaign.
How much revenue did the Currys campaign generate?
The work was credited with £500m in incremental revenue over two years, alongside a 1.1 percentage point market share gain and a 44% uplift in long-term ROI.
What were the other main IPA Effectiveness winners?
Omnicom was Effectiveness Company of the Year and PHD Media was Effectiveness Agency of the Year, with awards also going to Nationwide, Specsavers, Andrex and NHS Blood and Transplant.
A £500m return from repositioning your own shop-floor staff is the strongest argument I know that brand and bottom line are not opposites. Currys did not discount its way to growth. It told a truer story about what it already owned, and the IPA judges verified every pound of it. — Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing
The most defensible growth rarely comes from the discount lever. It comes from telling a truer story about a strength competitors cannot copy.
What capability does your business own that a rival simply cannot replicate, and is your marketing making customers feel it?
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact us on danieln@merxmarketing.co.uk
Sources: More About Advertising, Decision Marketing, WARC.
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Written by Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing Ltd and Marketing Minute
