A man and woman hide behind a Curry's banner out of the way of the powerful sigh

The Making of Currys' Award-Winning Diversity Ad

Currys marketer Aisling Lancaster and the AMV BBDO team reflect on the creation of their winning campaign for this year’s Channel 4 Diversity in Advertising Award

By Stephen Lepitak

29 May 2025

Tech retailer Currys is on a mission to be at the forefront of innovation and access. That ambition is driving a broader push for inclusion, not just in its retail experience but now in its marketing. That shift in perspective led Currys and creative agency AMV BBDO to create ‘Sigh of Relief’, an ad that puts accessibility front and centre with an on-screen audio narrator, British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter, and subtitles — all visible at once.

The campaign runs under the Beyond Techspectations platform and was developed as part of Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising Award, winning £1m of airtime across the broadcaster’s network.

The award sees Currys and AMV BBDO become the ninth recipient with previous themes having centred on authentically representing and reflecting the LGBTQIA+ community, women, people with visible and non-visible disabilities, and diverse ethnic backgrounds. Previous brand winners include E45, the RAF, Maltesers, Vanish, and FIFA.

The central concept of the 1-minute and 20-second film is built around the huge sigh of relief that is let out by three customers with accessibility needs when shopping for tech appliances in-store, when they feel their needs are supported.

“We were talking about what it means to navigate the world as a disabled person, where you're constantly having to assert your needs, and even then, once you have been able to do that, not necessarily having them met,” explains Lauren Peters, AMV BBDO creative who worked on the ad alongside partner Augustine Cerf. “Just being able to go into a space and feel genuinely understood and catered for is so relieving. And that's how it was born. It was then a case of marrying this sense of relief and this feeling of being catered for with the comedic, hyperbolic world of Currys.”

This isn’t the first sign of progress for the retailer as it increases its accessibility in-store, explains Aisling Lancaster, head of brand and advertising for Currys. That includes becoming a member of the Hidden Disabilities sunflower initiative as well as introducing an in-store quiet hour for five days a week.

It has also begun to trial an app called ‘Welcome’ in a couple of regions to support customers with additional support needs by sharing their information and the product they are interested in seeing with staff before they travel to the store. A staff member is trained to meet those specific needs for that customer’s visit.

“We just saw it as a fantastic opportunity to be able to bring some of those amazing things that we're doing to life,” Lancaster states.

Nothing about us without us

The film aims to be completely inclusive, with accessibly challenged professionals appearing both in front and behind the camera. Produced by Omnicom Production with media planned by Spark Foundry, AMV BBDO also looked to bring in organisations that could help the team produce something that felt authentic to the lived situations of the Disabled community, while retaining the brand humour that Currys has incorporated across its brand communications.

The initial aim was challenging enough, but as the film developed, it was apparent that the original idea would need to go even further to ensure more people could experience it.

Even before pitching the concept, AMV BBDO's team worked with global inclusive research agency Open Inclusion to overcome any knowledge gap that exists across the teams, explains creative director Jez Tribe. “We can sit in our office and try and write concepts, but we don't have the lived experience.”

“The important thing is we're trying. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we're not getting it quite right, and we try again."

Aisling Lancaster, head of brand and advertising for Currys

They also worked with Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) but to create something more widely inclusive, it became apparent that alongside subtitles, a signer and an audio describer would appear across every single scene, something Peters claims proved to be creatively beneficial. But the inclusion of so many people in each take was far from straightforward.

“Trying to get everyone to do their optimal performance in one take is incredibly challenging. So, what we ended up having to do was kind of shoot separate shots, essentially, of certain people in the scene, and then stitch them together,” she explains.

On set, everything was double-checked by RNID and the RNIB representatives, which lengthened the time spent completing each shot. The process of making an inclusive ad also taught the time about the confines of the 30 and 60-second ad length currently.

“The industry is not set up to make inclusive ads,” expresses Lancaster who hopes the industry sees the ad as “a rallying cry” that shows how clients and agencies must work and learn together while picking up that responsibility of inclusion.

She explains that challenges around time included the need to sign each letter of a brand name, as there is no one sign for any brand name. This resulted in "a lot of pointing at logos" which is a challenge for BSL signers to overcome on screen that most of the audience won't realise.

“Perfection is not possible,” concedes Breandan Ward, co-founder and co-creator of Open Inclusion and associate professor for NYU. “Do we have the audacity to try and the humility to know that we mightn't get it perfect, because perfection doesn't exist? We do hope that the humour strikes that right balance that aligns with the courage theme, as well as honours the lived experience of many people who are watching it.”

Consistently Currys

Despite this being a new way of working, the final film is distinctively a Currys campaign, including the brand colours, writing, and performances. For all its intentions around inclusion, the main mission, from Currys' perspective, is that it still acts as a brand campaign and conveys the core vision that the retailer can help everyone to enjoy mainstream technology and cater to everyone’s needs across its in-store and online experiences.

“The important thing is we're trying. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we're not getting it quite right, and we try again,” says Lancaster. We used this phrase a lot – ‘progress over perfection’ during the creation of the ad. From our perspective, we want people to know that we're trying. Everyone is the most important bit for us, and to support us, and go with us on that journey.”

Launching on 29 May, the campaign kicks off with a 60-second hero spot airing during Taskmaster on Channel 4. It will run exclusively on Channel 4 for the first week while, in parallel, it will be amplified across organic social media, using a variety of tailored assets to extend reach, engagement and reinforce the brand’s message.

"A labour of love for every one of the amazing AMV BBDO team who brought it into the world. The campaign places inclusivity and accessibility at the heart of the narrative, with lead characters delivering audio description and BSL throughout the ad," says Xavier Rees, chief executive of AMV BBDO.

"Importantly, Curry's already ‘walk the walk’ on this stuff. They have brilliant initiatives that make choosing amazing tech easier for everyone (and are continuing to invest in more). And it was they who encouraged us to enter. So massive respect to Aisling Lancaster and Dan Rubel [brand and marketing director for Currys] for leading the way," Rees added.

Aisling Lancaster, head of brand and advertising at Currys spoke further with Creative Salon about the campaign ahead of it's launch.

Creative Salon: What does 'Sigh of Relief' say about the brand, and how does it stay consistent with the rest of Curry’s marketing comms? Is it stand stand-alone or an integrated part of the ongoing strategy?

Aisling Lancaster: “Our vision - to help everyone enjoy amazing technology - guides everything we do, including our advertising. It felt like the right time to enter the Channel 4 awards and create an advert that is inclusive by design, particularly as we continue to progress our range of accessibility and inclusion initiatives.

“We also wanted to ensure we stay consistent with the light-hearted and humorous tone established through our ‘Beyond Techspectations’ adverts, where our expert colleagues going above and beyond play a central role. Adverts that focus on inclusivity rarely use a comedic angle, in part due to the nature of the subject matter, but we wanted to approach the topic from a different angle – one we have lots of experience in, and we know resonates well with customers.”

Why and how did you go about preparing to enter the contest? Was it something you brought to the agency? What was the brief?

“We entered the contest because the concept fits so well with both our journey as a business and our established light-hearted tone. The brief was simple – we’re doing lots to support inclusion as a Currys business, but how can we bring this to life through our ‘Beyond Techspectations' creative vehicle?

“In preparing our entry we did have to adapt to our usual process. We brought in experts on inclusion and accessibility issues, consulting with external stakeholders like Open Inclusion, the RNIB and the RNID, as well as internal stakeholders like the employee resource group - Disability at Currys.”

CS: The partnership with AMV BBDO is long-standing - why does it work so well and continue to flourish?

AL: “Our work with AMV BBDO is a true partnership. We work together as one team, along with our media agency Spark Foundry, which means we’re truly aligned on approach and tone, and we don’t shy away from any difficult conversations. We’re constantly challenging each other to do the right thing, all in pursuit of doing the right thing creatively, for our customers and for Currys.”

CS: Why is it so important that Currys’ ads feature its staff members? Why has that been front and centre of the strategy for so long?

AL: “Colleagues are a central part of our advertising strategy in the same way that they are central to our mission to help everyone enjoy amazing technology. They’re also crucial to our store accessibility schemes like Quiet Hour in our stores, 5-days a week, and the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower scheme, of which we are a part of too.

“They truly are at the heart of what we do, and our key point of difference from our competitors. That and our stores across UK&I where you can see, feel and try our amazing tech.”