People’s Pension casts Joe Wilkinson as its ‘Fairy Godmother’ in first ever TV campaign

Workplace pension scheme People’s Pension¹ is taking to the small screen for the first time with a new national television advertising campaign starring comedian Joe Wilkinson² and introducing ‘Famously Fair’, its new brand proposition. Famously Fair reflects People’s Pension’s belief that everyone deserves a good pension, backed by its long track record of putting ordinary savers first.

The new campaign transports viewers to an ‘unfairground’ – a funfair where the games are stacked against the people playing them – before Wilkinson arrives as People’s Pension’s unlikely ‘Fairy Godmother’, complete with fairy wings and wand, to start putting things right.

Created with Bountiful Cow³ and directed by Sye Allen⁴, the campaign uses the familiar unfairness of rigged fairground games as a playful analogy for a pensions world that can too often feel complicated, exclusive or stacked against ordinary savers. Completing the scene, some of People’s Pension’s own staff appear in the minute-long advert as extras.

At the campaign’s heart is the simple, yet often overlooked idea, that pensions should work fairly for everyone. It’s an idea central to People’s Pension, which serves more than seven million savers across the UK and is designed for the many, not just the privileged few. Its parent, People’s Partnership, has no shareholders and reinvests surplus profits for the benefit of scheme members, including through its Savings Reward, which returns more than £4 million to eligible savers every month.

David Meliveo, Chief Commercial Officer for People’s Pension, said:

“Pensions don’t always feel like they are for everyone. We think that’s wrong, and we wanted to bring that unfairness to life through our first national TV campaign.

“People’s Pension already looks after the retirement savings of millions of hard-working people across the UK, but we want many more people to know who we are, what we stand for and why we do things differently. Television gives us the opportunity to take that message to a much bigger audience – building greater awareness of People’s Pension and what makes our approach different.

“The unfairground felt like the perfect world for that. Everyone knows the feeling of playing a game where the odds seem stacked against you and Joe is exactly the sort of Fairy Godmother you’d want turning up to sort it out.”

Joe Wilkinson said:

“It’s about time I was a fairy godmother. I always knew I had what it takes. There are plenty of unfair things in this life, so having a magic wand and being allowed to sort a few of them out seemed like a bit of fun.”

Adam Foley, CEO of Bountiful Cow, said:

“Financial services advertising can look a bit like wallpaper to most people – an entirely forgettable blizzard of numbers and people with grey hair smiling at laptops, with media bought in the same old places. Since we’ve been working with Peoples Pension, we’ve taken a very different approach in both creative and media, which has come together in ‘Famously Fair’. Joe Wilkinson in the ‘unfairground’ is about as far from traditional pension advertising as you can get – and that’s always been the ambition.”

‘Famously Fair’ is intended to become a long-term platform for People’s Pension, spanning consumer advertising, employer and adviser communications, social content and its wider voice on fairness in pensions.

The campaign will extend across linear TV, video-on-demand, YouTube, radio, social and out-of-home activity, with the October campaign expected to reach around 31 million working adults – approximately 85% of the working adult population⁵.

The campaign is the first work delivered by Bountiful Cow since the agency expanded its remit with People’s Pension at the end of last year to span creative, media and organic social.