TV Cream

Bric-a-Brac: C is for...

Choices Pension Ads

Hi Man!It’s the late 1980s, and, once again, banks and building societies are at pains to come over all friendly, as their TV ad campaigns extend a cosy, understanding arm round your shoulder (all the better to snaffle that loose fiver from your inside pocket). After all, it’s not all work, work, work! Wackiest of all was the campaign cooked up by Guardian Royal Exchange (members, lest we forget, of LAUTRO) for their Choices pension scheme, employing a game old duffer (who may have been Hugh Cecil of Armando Iannucci Shows fame, but don’t quote us on that) who applied for the exciting new pension which ‘you can take from job to job, whether you’re fully employed, partly employed, or even taking time off from work’. Crestfallen after being denied on age grounds, he then turned up in leather jacket, baseball cap and modish smiley badges. “Hi, man! I’ve come about a Choices pension!” So rib-tickling was this conceit, the ‘groovy duffer’ became a regular character for a couple of years’ worth of brand-building, until either they got bored or went under in the ’91 crash (and we’re not trudging off to Companies House to find out).

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. sean

    December 13, 2009 at 9:42 am

    The old duffer looks like Norman Lumsden who played the fly fisherman J R Hartley off the yellow pages adverts!

  2. Colin

    June 17, 2010 at 6:56 pm

    I think it was him, Sean!

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