AMV BBDO and Spark Foundry's Beyond Techspectations platform for Currys takes the 2026 IPA Effectiveness Grand Prix, credited with £500m of extra revenue over two years.
Currys has won the Grand Prix at the 2026 IPA Effectiveness Awards, the most coveted prize for proving advertising works, for Beyond Techspectations, its brand platform by AMV BBDO with the media agency Spark Foundry. The paper credits the campaign with £500m of incremental revenue over two years, a 1.1 percentage point gain in market share and a 44 per cent increase in long-term return on investment, as Decision Marketing reported.
The platform, which launched in 2024, put Currys staff at the centre of the advertising as the experts who help customers past the confusion of buying technology, often with a comic twist on whatever product a brand partner is paying to feature. According to the IPA paper it returned the retailer to sustained growth and made Currys the UK’s most preferred technology retailer, after years in which it was seen mainly as a place to compare prices before buying online.
Suzanne Quinn, Tesco’s UK customer director and a member of the jury, said what impressed the judges was that the work “went far beyond advertising alone”, helping to drive change across the whole organisation.
PHD Media was named Effectiveness Agency of the Year and Omnicom Effectiveness Company of the Year. Specsavers won the Broadbent Prize, Nationwide’s work with Mother and Wavemaker took the Channon Prize, and Andrex won the President’s Prize. The best not-for-profit paper went to Alzheimer’s Society, and the best small budget to NHS Blood and Transplant with VML.
The IPA Grand Prix is the closest advertising has to proof. Papers are judged on hard commercial results rather than craft, and a £500m revenue claim survives scrutiny from accountants as well as marketers. That a retailer selling other companies’ products won it with a brand platform, rather than with price promotions, is the useful lesson.
It is also a good year for brands this site has written about. Specsavers and Nationwide are both long-running campaigns built on consistency, the same quality the IPA keeps rewarding. For why effectiveness thinking matters, see our piece on the effectiveness function.
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