McEnroe knows his score, do you know yours?

In the run up to the summer of grass court tennis and the Aegon Tennis Championships at The Queen's Club next month, Pure Media's client Aegon continue to maximise their association with the sport and leverage their sponsorship by signing up big hitter and tennis legend John McEnroe,

Promoting Aegon's Retiready offering, he features in a series of videos showing him "moonlighting" as a luckless door-to-door salesman and features some classic McEnroe catchphrases:

The film is designed to be a tongue-in-cheek prompt for those approaching the retirement stage of their career to think about how financially prepared they are for retirement.

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The Big-Top Bungle

We have pointed out a few unfortunate online, outdoor and print ad placements in the past, where context and content have been uneasy and inappropriate bedfellows.

This has predominantly been as a result of advertisers booking ads that have fallen foul of being placed in contextual environments online that happen to have a negative context. They are therefore being caught out by algorithmic oversight as opposed to natural human instinct to place ads correctly, with positive synergy.

Or print ads running as per the guaranteed position booked ie. colour fractional right hand outside edge - omitting to consider the consequences of the editorial proximity ie. facing inappropriate current affairs and news stories in print - example below:

However, this week in the Metro, there was an internal editorial conflict between the image and cover headline of the ‘Life and Style’ section and a sad topical news story that ran earlier in the paper.

Surely there was an editorial flat plan assessment ahead of sending the paper to print?

Whilst ad misplacements are an oversight that can occur due to fulfilling guaranteed positions or trusting the

technological systems that associate ad context and placements - this editorial faux pas seems far less

understandable as there should be much greater flexibility to move things around from an editorial perspective and avoid such overt negativities.

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Down the Tube

On 29th April 2014, a 48-hour tube strike started after talks broke down between London Underground and the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT). It was predicted by BusinessZone that the strike had cost businesses "£600m in lost working hours, business and productivity" alone; without even considering the cost of wasted advertising spend.

Underground advertising is typically bought in 2-week cycles, and it doesn't come cheap. Meaning, 2 of the 14 days of ad space occupancy were totally useless during the strike, because nobody could see them! 14.5% of wasted advertising spend throughout the underground.

Another point to consider is the huge decrease in freesheet newspaper circulation / readership:

In retrospect, the prediction of £600m is a lot lower than the true impact and wastage caused.

Those losing out include names big and small:

Especially Virgin Trains - an outside back cover never to be seen

And as reported by CityAM last week - Gatwick certainly didn't Bank on the major Tube strike either - The

airport had staged a week-long advertising takeover in both Bank and Westminster Tube stations but with the Tube strike, which spanned much of two days, it’s likely to have had far less of an impact than they’d hoped.

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