The Spin has seen its fair share of marketing missteps, design quirks and headlines that make you do a double take. Here are some eyebrow-raising examples that the Spin discovered including some very misleading ads, dates and headlines from the month gone by.
1. This billboard in India promised a full head of hair, complete with before-and-after images of a UAE businessman. Spot-the-difference enthusiasts would want to leave this to the amateurs. Even the best in the business might struggle to compete with that level of transformation.
2. Anniversaries, ideally, come once a year. The Spin suspects that this newspaper might be working off a slightly different calendar than the rest of us. Some milestones, it seems, arrive earlier the second time around.
3. A few missing letters can bring things down faster than expected. Behind a news anchor, tomorrow’s plans take a turn no one quite saw coming. Not every breakdown needs to be this literal. Though the caption may double up as an oddly specific threat to whoever’s running the graphics desk.
4. We guess this is what happens when the beef between the design and copy teams runs a bit deep. The brief for the creative is clearly intended for an Easter Sunday roast, but how special is the roast if Easter arrives
‘every Wednesday’?
5. Surely, the letter ‘A’ in all acronyms doesn’t stand for ‘American’? A headline from The New York Times gave NATO – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – a slightly more local flavour. Close, but not quite the same.
6. Some thoughts are best left unsaid. This message from Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on X was posted with with a little extra … context. A draft that didn’t quite get the memo.
7. Some headlines really commit to the bit. This one throws activism, education and seafood into the same pot, with a result that feels a little hard to swallow. Not quite the catch of the day.
8. Geography doesn’t usually invite creative licence. This take on the Strait of Hormuz suggests otherwise. A narrow miss, in more ways than one.
