Industry divided on DWP’s auto-enrolment TV ads

The £3.5m adverts, which aired for the first time this week, are part of a wider media push that sees the DWP use newspaper, radio, and poster advertising to make more employees aware of the impending start of auto-enrolment.

Pensions minister Steve Webb praised the advert when he spoke at PW’s Pensions Leadership Summit last week.

He said: “When I met employees to test this advert out, they said, ‘this makes us feel good about auto-enrolment; at least it’s some positivity about it’.”

The National Association of Pension Funds also expressed its support for the adverts’ clarity.

Chief executive Joanne Segars said: “It can be tough to talk about pensions and ‘automatic enrolment’ is hardly something that trips off the tongue – it’s great to see the government getting the basic messages out on this landmark reform and I liked the way the ad mixed in a few famous business faces.”

But the campaign was criticised by Kevin Shilling, director of Shilling Communcation.

He said: “As someone who said of pensions ‘I don’t have one – I think life’s too short and it would be another thing to worry about’, the choice of Karren Brady to front the campaign is an odd one.

“The DWP has put these people in as trusted voices, yet the first person you see in the video can’t seem to make her mind up about whether she’s in or out.”

Shilling said the advert appeared to have been produced by a team with no knowledge of pensions or of the new legislation.

“It is misleading. Workplace pensions is a great opportunity to set out the facts about pensions but the government has gone for the easy option – as they did with stakeholder pensions – of misleading the public.”