Aviva has recreated the restaurant from its recent advert at the Pensions UK annual conference to showcase how it supports customers across every stage of their financial journey.
At the conference in Manchester, Aviva brought a lifelike version of ‘Gina’s’ Italian restaurant to the event, complete with a working pizza oven. The stall recreated the restaurant featured in Aviva’s December 2024 advert, which followed Gino handing the business to Gina, prompting the name change.
The advert was designed as an emotionally engaging consumer campaign, highlighting how Aviva supports customers across insurance, wealth, and retirement.
In an interview with Financial Promoter, Dawn Anderson, head of workplace proposition at Aviva, said the advert was designed to tell the full story of the characters’ lives.
She explained that the advert illustrates how Aviva supports customers across insurance, wealth and retirement. From providing the insurance the characters’ business needs, to guiding them through investments, and ultimately helping Gino retire and pass the business to Gina, Aviva’s offerings are designed to support each stage of their journey.
“It’s there to demonstrate that Aviva can be there for you throughout that whole experience. We cover a breadth of solutions,” she said.
She noted that the stall is designed to work in the same way, with attendees recognising the restaurant from the advert and sparking conversations about how Aviva supports the characters — and, by extension, real-life customers — throughout their financial journeys.
She highlighted that many aspects of the characters’ lives are only hinted at in the advert. The stand allows Aviva staff to explain these in more detail and show how the company can help.
For example, while the advert shows Gina investing, it doesn’t explain how. At the stand, employees can discuss the investment products available online, as well as those offered through workplace pensions via payroll deduction.
There is also an opportunity to highlight a recently launched product not featured in the advert: the career break functionality in Aviva’s retirement forecasting.
“Even though Gina doesn’t do that specifically in the advert, if you think about her age, there’s a possibility she might take maternity leave or something similar,” she said.
The tool is designed to address the gender pension gap by recognising that life isn’t linear. While other forecasting tools assume customers will contribute at the same level until retirement, Aviva’s functionality allows members to see the impact if contributions are reduced or paused for a period of time.
Both the stall and the advert are part of Aviva’s strategy to show customers the full range of products it offers, highlighting that while many may know Aviva for insurance, there is much more available.
“We’ve had a really strong focus over the past few years to make sure that the Aviva isn’t just seen as a car insurance provider,” she said. “We have all these other products and we want to support people right through their lifetime.”
She added that the advert effectively strengthens this shift in focus: “It tells a personal narrative through the advert, so viewers feel they could be going through a similar experience,” she said. “They understand how that dynamic works in the family, which can sometimes be more abstract in other adverts. But this one is very good at touching the heart.”
To ensure the stall conveyed the same message as the advert, Anderson noted that the marketing team worked closely with both the brand team and the product teams, including her own.
She explained that the marketing team acted as a conduit between her team and the brand, facilitating collaboration where direct communication might not typically occur.
When the idea for the Pensions UK conference emerged, the marketing team led the development process by working with the brand team to shape the concept and coordinating with the relevant product teams to understand their latest initiatives and bring all the elements together.