Currys Doubles Down on AI to Build the Tech Retailer of the Future

Like many brands, tech retailer Currys has been building its AI credentials - not just as a gimmick, but also as a genuine driver of business transformation. Most recently, that has included AI-supported video tech within its customer delivery operations.

That ambition to lead with clarity and creativity extends to its agency partnerships too. That has been true within its internal creative department, which has whitelisted Generative AI tool Adobe Firefly to support its production process for in-store creative. And earlier this summer, it extended its successful relationship with AMV Group to appoint Native@AMV, a creator-led platform demystifying AI for the masses as it continues in its endeavour to become the home of AI. It’s a move that supports Currys’ broader ambition to become the go-to destination for all things AI — not just in what it sells, but in how it shows up.

The business is fully doubling down on the potential of the technology, going so far as to include the pun 'AI.chieve more!' on banners across its online communications. It has also introduced an online guide to AI to answer consumer questions.

AI Driven by Curiosity, And Not Hype

As a retailer selling the latest in household tech, Currys is equally committed to pushing technological boundaries within its own walls. Head of creative services Stuart McDonald explains why the business began experimenting with Adobe Firefly last year.

For most companies, there’s a self-imposed pressure to at least explore what AI can do, says McDonald. For Currys, however, the question was less about if, and more about how generative AI could enhance creativity while saving valuable time.

“It was exploring the possibilities to start with. There was a real surge to make sure we were using AI technology to improve quality and efficiencies,” he adds, revealing that this began more than 18 months ago.

The search for the right AI tool was underway when, last summer, a brief landed to create a campaign promoting a new range of AI-powered laptops ahead of the back-to-school season. Ben Hickman, senior digital and creative design Manager at Currys, says the project became the perfect catalyst to test what was possible.

With a crowded field of emerging AI startups all making bold claims, choosing which tool to whitelist was “unnerving,” admit Hickman and McDonald. Adobe Firefly stood out because it offered a level of confidence — its AI had been trained using licensed stock imagery, giving the team greater trust that their creative output wouldn’t stumble over copyright issues.

They admit that due to the plethora of little-known start-ups on the market, all making different claims about what they could do, it was “unnerving” choosing which tool to whitelist. Adobe was chosen as it was able to give them confidence, from having trained its AI using licensed stock imagery, giving them more trust in the eventual creative output not falling foul of copyright laws.

From there the team went through a self-teaching process on how to operate the software through Adobe webinars and guidance. But ultimately, it was by first-hand experimentation – the old phrase ‘test and fail’ that was the best education for the creative team which tends to rely on stock imagery when creating work.

“Working on a live brief really threw us in at the deep end. We had to get it to work because we didn’t have time to do it twice,” admits Hickman. “We got there through trial and error, to just get it to do different things, and you then start to pick up tips and tricks. I'm sure you're only learning a fraction of what it's capable of doing.”

And that creative testing period wasn’t focused on meeting any imposed commercial strategy. The internal designers and agencies team was given free rein to explore how it would improve their creativity and productivity to determine the benefits through adoption. They found it saved time on ideation and money on going to agencies for photography and production.

That loose period of adoption also helped with the embracing of the technology, confirms McDonald. And because of the scale of the education process being introduced across the company, there is also a dedicated internal team that is putting processes in place around AI to ensure its safe adoption by Currys. That AI task force is being led by Andy Gamble, Currys chief information and transformation officer, with members working with different parts of the business to better understand how they use it.

“It's a very rigid structure within the business. We've got our own AI Xco [???]. Anytime anybody's using any software, it has to go through that team. So until Adobe came in, with all the assurances that came with Adobe, we were in the background learning some of the tools, but not as part as an official process. So until we had that assurance from Adobe Note, there was a year of trying to find out what works, but also asking, ‘What can we trust?’” 

The final posters were selected following various iterations of prompts and graphics being fed into Firefly for training purposes. It needed images and information about the new laptop range, with the team following a string of positive results, encouraged by what it was producing.

Hickman says that the implementation of Gen AI has seen the team benefit through the generation of high-quality ideas at a rapid pace.

“It moves that early part of the creative process on so quickly, which then gives us more time to really explore several ideas. Then we've got options to go with that we think work. It also allows us to provide a lot more variation and options for our various stakeholders and suppliers who want different things from us.”

A Expanding Agency Relationship

While the internal team has begun producing work using Firefly, it has been business as usual in terms of Currys and AMV BBDO – with the pair recently winning Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising award with ‘Sigh of Relief’.

McDonald says that the adoption of Firefly has not had any impact on that relationship though.

“The way we interact with AMV is not so much how we're creating things. So as a creative internal team, we will create a toolkit on how a campaign should look. If we take Black Friday, for example… we will create a toolkit that says ;this is the wording. Here's all of the assets. There are examples across all channels on how it should look.’ Then all of the people internally who are creating everything for each channel will use that toolkit to go and create their own things. That will also go to AMV with our live action TV, so it doesn't really cross over to what they do. The animated content that you see on TV and in paid social now is internal. So, there's not a crossover as far as that is concerned,: he explains.

The addition of Native@AMV will see the agency support Currys’ AI marketing through a remit that spans both product campaigns and always-on creator content, offering advice, access, and expertise on the subject, making AI more accessible.

A dedicated AI-focused social channel was launched in May featuring funny and educational content explaining what emerging tech can actually do for people - in plain English under the banner 'Currys Sells What Now?'.

Another area the brand has been flourishing across has been with its social media output, which continues the above-the-line theme of featuring Currys ‘colleagues’ front and centre in outrageous in-store situations.

Because of the focus on the colleagues, it has yet to be decided how and where Gen AI could feature and what impact it would make on the work, which has a distinctively comedic tone.

McDonald adds that his own team has been able to supplement the ongoing ‘Beyond Techspectations’ brand platform to produce impossible imagery for example, on repairs colleague with six arms, or an installations colleague in a Mission-Impossible style heist pose, hanging from a ceiling.

“We've been able to use it to bring that to life a bit more and have a bit more synergy between above the line and what we're doing in other marketing channels. Mainly it's using it more across the campaigns that we're doing, because it's not just the hero ones, it's educating and enabling everybody else in Ben's team to be able to do it. We've got 50 campaigns a year and it's not a lot of iterations of each campaign. We're not translating for different countries. So for us, it's not a production thing.  It’s ‘Where are these efficiencies to be able to mass produce one creative?’ It's ‘How can we, instead of heroing five-to-ten creatives a year, we can hero all 50 because Firefly gives us the ability to be able to do that.”

Generative AI is not just boosting Currys’ creative team’s capabilities — it’s lifting the retailer's ambition, freeing it to think bigger and push further.