With London under the grip of a painful subway strike this week, Adidas was one of several brands to tweet tactically about the industrial action. It tweeted pictures of people running in Adidas sneakers, with messages such as "When transport goes down, lace up. Show us how you're beating the commute. Share your running pics! #boostlondon." Another photo was captioned: "Your stride. The most reliable way to travel. #boostlondon."

Other brands to capitalize on the strike included Pizza Express, which emailed people with 40 per cent off vouchers as a reward for making it in to work, and Innocent Drinks, which was pictured handing out free smoothies adorned with stickers such as "I didn't want to get the tube to work anyway."

Meanwhile, BBC London was compiling people's travel reports on a crowdsourced tube strike map.