Behind The Campaign: Currys Social Media
By James Herring on Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Currys cracked the Gen-Z code not with slick ads, but by finally getting what TikTok and Instagram are actually for.
Their push into social wasn’t about racking up followers just for vanity’s sake. It was about making Currys feel like it belonged in the feed.
No hard sell, no brand-y nonsense just meme-savvy, trend-hugging content that felt like it could’ve been made by your weird gadget-obsessed mate.
Rather than clumsily inserting themselves into conversations, Currys became the conversation.
The ongoing work is a masterclass in not trying too hard: being subtle, self-aware and actually funny and (as a result) has ridden the algorithm to glory.
We caught up with Currys Senior Social Media and PR Manager Ryan Todd on the rigorous strategy behind their torrent of excellent social media weirdness.
Let’s start with the big shift — what was the brief that made Currys decide to completely rethink its social media strategy?
When I joined the business 4 years ago, nobody cared about Currys as a brand, let alone on Social.
It was the place your parents went to buy a fridge or telly from, but customer connection was non-existent on Social in particular.
What were your goals?
To get people to care about Currys as a brand on Social, which is a huge challenge for a number of reasons.
Nobody wants to hear from a brand on Social, particularly one like Currys which isn’t ‘cool’.
People don’t shop at Currys often, so it’s hard to build connection to them in marketing.
We were a traditional company with traditional values.
However – my view was, there is no point playing it safe on Social. You either do it properly, with the aim of getting cut-through (whatever that might be, e.g. vanity metrics, traffic) or don’t bother.
We want to add value to a user experience, in a heavily saturated market – there’s a lot of brilliant content creators out there, so we need to match them or better them to stand out.
We use humour and surprise (that Currys would post this) to help, alongside many other tactics.
Currys | Instagram
What were the biggest internal hurdles in transforming a tech retailer into a funny internet person?
I was fortunate that Currys rebranded at the time I joined, and so the TOV changed completely, as we moved from CurrysPCWorld (and others) into one, unified brand, which had modern values – wit, playfulness and humour all appeared in the brand guidelines.
How do you balance paid vs earned?
What cuts through in Paid media & what cuts through in earned (organic Social, PR etc, so my channels) are very different.
You have to work very hard to get cut through on Social, and so you need to take risks to stand out above the outstanding content creators already on platforms.
Internal buy-in was achieved through having a couple of early successes.
@currysWhy wait for pancake day? 😅 #pancakes #crepes #americanpancakes #pancakeday #nutella #chocolate #dessert #saltedcaramel #pancakestacks #airfryer #airfryerdessert #dessert
The pancake video went viral across the world and sparked debate in broadcast & print media too, showing power of social.
How does social align with the rest of the marketing mix?
‘Beyond Techspectations’ is our wonderful ATL team – we replicate with our own real life challenges, like this brilliant piece with huge influencers ShxtsNGigs & testing Dyson’s noise-cancelling headphones for real.
View this post on Instagram
There’s a joined-up approach to a point – Social-first TOV & humour are very different to TV TOV & humour, so whilst the pillar of wit is always there, this manifests in different ways!
The Paid Social activity on TikTok is starting to reflect this too, so it feels similar in nature to our organic work.
I also aligned with senior stakeholders in the goal of organic Social – fame.
Awareness, love, affinity, connection, all the things Social can do, and punch well above its weight in results.
There can always be reservation in TOV internally and we certainly have many pushbacks across the business, and through the suppliers who pay for our content, but we’ve been clear on our vision from the start, and the more wins you get, the more freedom you get!
The decision to put Currys staff at the heart of your content was a bold one — how did you get buy-in?
Colleagues are a massive USP for Currys, particularly with the rise in online business – we are one of the only retailers in our space who allow you to see, feel & try your product before you buy it, all with the expert tips & advice from real human in store. Customers value this, which is shown in our recent business results.
On Social, I felt colleagues were the perfect way to get buy-in from business on our strategy – a lot of our content may seem ‘rogue’ or ‘without a particular sales message’, but if colleagues are there, in their uniform, in a Currys store, the branding is prominent throughout & we’re landing our business pillar of Colleagues!
We bring their amazing personalities to life, and will continue to do so – people LOVE seeing our colleagues in store, because of the relatable retail moments & humour they can bring. Often delivering dry sales messages too,
View this post on Instagram
The above did 32m organic views across their channels.
Do you pay them?
All colleagues that appear in our content are paid for doing so, and we work closely with the amazing store managers & teams to ensure we aren’t getting in the way of colleagues doing their day job!
How do you balance authenticity with polish?
All our content is shot on phones now, because that’s what all the top content creators are doing.
We don’t want to stand out with high production on all our content, so we focus on adding value to the user experience through wit & relatable humour.
How do you strike the balance between pushing products vs. pushing brand…?
You can do both – most of our content is paid for by our suppliers, but you can weave products in subtly, or literally, as long as the creative is strong enough.
@currys Ninja Double Stack Air Fryer – available at Currys ✨ #currys #trend #viral #ninjaairfryer #ninjastackairfryer #ninjadouble ♬ original sound – Currys
Almost all of our content features product in some form
@currys Our colleagues will do anything for the content 🥶 Search on our site 🔎 LUMI THERAPY Recovery Pod Max Portable Insulated Ice Bath #currys #icebath #currys #electronics ♬ original sound – Currys
View this post on Instagram
How did you land on the current tone of voice — and was there any nervousness about ‘sounding too young’ and alienating older shoppers –
One of our key strategic pillars is to always show that we ‘get it’ – whether that be getting tech, getting Gen Z humour, or Millennial humour.
@currys Water you waiting for, shop our epic deals now 💦 #bankholiday #deals #tech #prank #comedy #fyp ♬ original sound – Currys
We pride ourselves on having a wide range of people & demographics within our teams who can lead or consult, depending on the piece. E.g. Gen Z moment I had to lean heavily on much younger people than me to help with scripting.
@currys The end 🤣🤣 #genz #genzlife #currys #tech #uk #fyp #viral ♬ original sound – Currys
You’ve been praised for leading and riding TikTok trends with speed and humour — what does your creative process and planning look like behind the scenes?
We have separate brainstorming sessions with our in-house team & agency, then we come together to decide on concepts to push on with.
We have a very active WhatsApp group with our agency (Fabric Social), where ideas & inspiration are shared, for us to bounce off each other & ensure all types of FYPs are covered!
How do you choose which topics and trends are right for the brand, and which ones to leave alone?
We take a view on a case-by-case basis. Is it too forced? What’s our Currys spin here?
Is there a playbook or a rule book?
Be flexible, reactive & listen to everyone’s ideas – the playbook is a 100 page strategy deck written by me, but a huge part of it is ensuring creativity can flow & ideas are given chances to get air time.
What does the internal sign of process look like?
For speed, I agreed the strategy in advance with senior stakeholders that I’m the final layer of approval for 99% of content – this way, we can jump on trends & topics as quickly as possible.
What’s been your most unexpectedly viral moment — and what do you think made it take off?
Water bottle kicking transition video from earlier was a surprise that it’s now our biggest ever video by all metrics, but some of the Gen Z trends that I have no idea what they mean always surprise me…
View this post on Instagram
Any disasters/blunders you’d care to care to share?
Let’s just say there’s plenty that don’t make it to light even on our channels now…
Ok so tell us about the results. What’s been the impact of all this on the business?
Our ROI of sales uplift continues to be up there with the best in marketing – this is ignoring all the other work that organic Social does (awareness, affinity) and focuses directly on sales attribution, which is incredible given we rarely add links to our content.
Consistently #1 vs our competitors by such a margin that we no longer compare to them – we now compare to best in class Social brands, such as Aldi.
3 years ago we’d be throwing a celebration party if one video went over 10k views, whereas now, it’s 100k minimum or we’re not interested!
