DFS dives into surreal style-hunting with ‘What’s Your Thing?’ campaign

The sofa specialists are back - this time catapulting viewers through a fantastical, Vivaldi-scored quest for the perfect style, created by Pablo

By Creative Salon

11 September 2025

This week, leading furniture retailer DFS launches the latest instalment of its ‘What’s Your Thing?’ brand platform. The launch marks their 5th major campaign led by creative agency Pablo, following last December’s booty-shaking Winter Sale campaign.

The campaign builds on the retailer’s ‘What’s Your Thing?’ platform, now in its 5th year, which is all about giving people the confidence to unlock their individuality and find the right sofa or home furniture centrepieces for them. This campaign plays off the insight that many people find it difficult to express their style, and feel overwhelmed when trying to discover something truly personal. DFS offers a solution in the form of their huge footprint of UK stores, with their expert staff waiting to guide people through the process.

The TV spot, ‘Thingception’, dramatises this decision making process, propelling a female protagonist through a mind-bending gauntlet of deliberation, resolving in her finding the right ‘thing’ in a DFS store.

In the spot, we open on our protagonist, pondering her style choices in a room she’s redecorating. Suddenly, she’s tipped upside down and launched into a series of surreal rooms inhabited by people who’ve found their style thing. The action is set to a modern rework of Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’. We start in an older couple’s room, where the sofa’s recline button triggers the entire room to tilt. She beats a hasty retreat, and smashes through into a classical library room that is rotating 360 degrees. The owner is sitting on his Chesterfield sofa, unperturbed. She escapes into a party room that cycles through multiple decor colour options. But no, she hasn’t found her thing yet. She bursts through a wall of cushions to find herself in a DFS store, where she finally spots the perfect thing for her. The voiceover says: “But fear not, finding your thing can be easy if you know where to look.” She is drawn towards the sofa, gliding across the store floor before contentedly jumping onto it. We match-cut back to find her in her own front room. The room is freshly decorated to fit her style, with a sleek green chenille sofa as the centrepiece.

The ad was directed by Bradley & Pablo at PRETTYBIRD and created by Will Bingham, Victoria Daltrey, Matt Fitch and Mark Lewis at Pablo.

The campaign launches on Thursday with the TV spot, alongside a suite of social & digital content created by Jungle Creations.

The social content spotlights the role DFS plays in helping people find their thing. At its core is a cast of distinctive, scripted ‘DFS colleagues’. Each character personifies one of the qualities that sets DFS apart: quality, style, comfort and trust. Through crafted sketches and character-driven storytelling, these ‘experts’ bring warmth and humour to content designed to feel genuinely entertaining.

The campaign reinforces DFS’s position as the nation’s leading sofa experts, ensuring the brand connects with audiences in a way that’s engaging, distinctive and impossible to ignore.

James Brewer, Marketing Director at DFS, said: “We’re excited to launch this latest chapter of What’s Your Thing?. Our brand platform continues to resonate with our audience, and puts a real stake in the ground for us as market leaders. This latest campaign focuses on our role in helping our customers find their thing, with the TV spot and digital content building these brand associations in complementary ways.”

Dan Watts, Chief Creative Officer at Pablo, said: “As someone that can spend an afternoon deciding which cheese roll to buy and who would perish without some kind of sat nav, seeing DFS do whatever it takes to make choice easy has been blissful. I hope this next push of work reminds everyone that their personal thing is out there and waiting amongst the madness of opinion in today’s world.”