Capability building | Retail & FMCG
We turned retail colleagues into influencers. Then watched engagement go through the roof.
When the pandemic closed showrooms overnight, Beko needed a way to get thousands of retail colleagues excited about products they couldn’t touch, in rooms they couldn’t enter. The answer wasn’t another face-to-camera demo. It was a content creator programme that nobody in the industry had tried before.
What Beko was really up against
Before the pandemic, Beko’s approach to retail training was built around the showroom. Get colleagues in front of the products, let them handle them, and the advocacy would follow. It worked – because the principle behind it was sound. People who play with a product are more likely to believe in it, recommend it, and sell it well.
Then the showrooms closed.
The fallback was face-to-camera product demos – a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation, but one that couldn’t replicate the energy of a showroom. The features, functions, and benefits of Beko’s products are genuinely compelling. The format just wasn’t doing them justice.
The situation called for something different. Not just a replacement for what had been lost – but something that could work harder than the original ever had.
The Impact
uplift in sales across both the Gurus and the wider retailer network
of the audience surveyed said they would recommend Grundig
of the Gurus would recommend the opportunity to others
The decision that changed everything
Beko could have invested in higher-production demo videos – a more polished version of what hadn’t been working. Instead, they brought in Solvd. We looked at what was actually driving product advocacy at scale in the wider world – and saw something worth borrowing from social media.
Influencer culture had already cracked the problem Beko was trying to solve: if you want people to believe in something, don’t tell them about it. Find someone they already trust, and let that person show them.
The brief to Solvd was to take that principle and make it work inside a retail colleague network. Not celebrities. Not affiliates with contractual motivations and no real connection to the work. Real colleagues – people genuinely excited about the products, passionate about the brand, and already part of the culture their peers recognise and trust.
Digging deeper to design smarter
To understand what retail staff cared about, we spent time understanding what helped them to drive sales and keep customers informed, happy and excited about their purchases.
Quick themes emerged around the time staff spent with the product. It was clear that those with hands-on product experience were better equipped to provide advice customers could trust on the sales floor.
“I have this at home. It’s great”
Interviews and focus groups formed the backbone of the research. And as often happens when you spend enough time listening, a passing comment unlocked everything.
“I have this at home. It’s great.”
That was the idea. Give retail staff the products themselves. Let them live with them, form an opinion, and talk about them from genuine experience rather than a spec sheet.
With many colleagues furloughed or on reduced hours during the pandemic, there was something else in it, too: a way to show that Beko valued its people at a moment when that mattered.
Hair dryers, fridge freezers, washing machines – all provided at cost, alongside a filming kit: camera, tripod, ring light, and microphone. A microsite gave Gurus everything they needed to create high-quality content: lighting guidance, example scripts, audio tips, editing advice, and inspiration from the world of professional product marketing.
The brief had become a movement.
What we built together
The programme became Grundig Gurus – an end-to-end influencer campaign built from the inside out.
Data-informed recruitment
Before a single Guru was selected, we mapped the mindset of the people we were looking for, identifying three traits that mattered most: leadership in-store, product expertise, and solution-oriented selling. Candidates auditioned, showing they had what it takes. For many, it was their first chance to build creative and filming skills. The recruitment process itself became part of the campaign, generating early excitement long before the first video was filmed.
Driving engagement from the start
The Gurus weren’t actors or spokespeople – they were real colleagues. Familiar faces to the people watching. That distinction changed everything. When your friend is on screen telling you why a product is worth your attention, you pay attention differently. Engagement climbed. Shares increased. Interaction went up. And alongside all of it, the right behaviours and habits embedded themselves naturally because the messenger was someone the audience already trusted.
Equipping for success
Being enthusiastic about a product and being able to communicate that on camera are two different skills. Each Guru was kitted out with everything they needed to create high-quality content with confidence – a tripod, ring light, and microphone, along with a practical guide on how to shoot content that looked and felt the part. The barrier between wanting to participate and being able to do it well was removed before it became an obstacle.
Built on the right platform
A consumer-grade experience was essential. Workplace by Meta became the home of the Grundig Gurus community – a familiar, social-first environment that retail colleagues already knew how to use. A supporting Google Sites microsite put just-in-time resources at the Gurus’ fingertips, and Restream turned moments that needed to feel live, like reveals, announcements, and Q&As, into broadcast-quality events rather than training sessions.
Supporting the Gurus throughout
Being handed a kit and a brief isn’t the same as being set up to succeed. Each Guru was supported throughout their campaign with creative sparring, feedback on drafts, and help with distribution and timing. The intention was never to train them once and hope for the best. It was to build a relationship in which the Gurus grew more confident, more ambitious, and more distinctive with every post.
The results, and the ripple beyond them
The Gurus campaign delivered against every metric we set out to move.
Engagement was immediate and sustained. Across all campaign posts, there were 10,533 views, 633 reactions, and 230 comments – with the average Workplace group member viewing 18 pieces of Guru content. The Workplace group itself grew by 13% over the course of the programme, as colleagues who saw what was happening wanted in.
Advocacy followed. 100% of the audience surveyed said they would recommend Grundig, and 94% of those had also sold a Grundig product. Every Guru said they’d recommend the role to a colleague. And sales saw an uplift of around 30%, both within the Guru population and across the wider retailer network.
But the number that matters most may be this: 93% of campaign content was delivered by the Gurus themselves. The training team hadn’t scaled up to deliver this work – they’d scaled themselves out of it. The colleagues had taken over.
And then the ripple started to spread.
Other sales staff, watching the Gurus, began creating their own videos and posts without being asked. The programme was generating organic imitators. The campaign then expanded across the Beko portfolio – Grundig, Leisure, Blomberg, and Flavel, and beyond, to Currys, Euronics, Hughes, and the wider retail network. What Beko had commissioned as a training intervention for one brand had reshaped how they engage sales colleagues across their entire business. The methodology itself became reusable IP in the form of the Digital Community Playbook – a durable artefact the Beko team continues to draw from.
What the data shows is only part of the picture. The more significant outcome is what Grundig Gurus proved: that the most credible voice in a retail colleague network isn’t a brand, a manager, or a polished production. It’s a peer. Building a programme around that insight – rather than around a content format – is what made this different from anything Beko had tried before.
The programme was awarded Bronze for Innovation in Learning at The Learning Awards 2023.
