Mysteries of the universe: who on earth approves this sort of thing, and why?

The question I asked when I saw this was not “why not?”. It was “why on earth?”

I saw it on the platform at Henley Station, just after I had finished interviewing Tony Laithwaite of Laithwaite’s and goodness knows how many other wine businesses.

Tony is very modest considering how successful he is. It was only almost as an aside that he admitted he has created what is probably the world’s largest wine merchants’ business.

The question is, what is that glass of wine doing on the poster? Did they put it there as a subtle tribute to Tony, whose office is not far away?

Since they sell insurance was it perhaps a roundabout reference to the number of glasses of wine you should drink every day if you want to stay alive?

Was the red slash a cunning echo of their logo, in the fond delusion that would boost their sales? Couldn’t they have found a more boring headline?

Is there even the slightest scintilla of a fraction of a ghost of a chance that it will do any good?

Tony told me that he gives his new people copies of my Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing. Like Peter Hargreaves, another successful businessman I have interviewed he has never spent a penny on image advertising.

What do they give new people at AXA and their agency to read? Alice in Wonderland?