14 DAY TRIAL // The poster riddled with mistakes came as an embarrassing PR fail for Egypt's new campaign to promote the draft Constitution. Besides the fact that the banner featured word errors, it also pictured foreigners instead of actual Egyptian citizens.
The humiliation became even worse when international press picked up to the errors and local media stated the obvious, that at least three of the people used in the poster where either foreigners or stock pictures, and that the agency involved in designing the banner didn't even bother to feature actual nationals.
Taking into consideration the fact that the new constitution is made for the “Egyptians” and that they are the ones affected by the laws in the first place, at least the government could have focused on a more inspired design.
Even if Egypt's State Information Service apologized for the misspelling error, they failed to address the issue of the nationalities featured in the campaign's official poster. After a quick search, it was revealed that the picture of the woman in the suit is actually a stock picture from Getty pictures that appears on several ads around the world.
Taking into consideration that the majority of Egyptian women wear head-scarves, the photo of the westernized woman is quite offensive. Even the pictures showing what people tend to think are actual Egyptians have their own controversial stories, as the photo of the soldier is rumored to have been used without approval.
The doctor from the poster was previously used in an American ad for stretch marks treatment, as shown by Twitter users. The other man featured in the banner is also related to an American publication about people with Down syndrome, notes Al Arabiya.
The first huge fail noticed in the poster was the misspelling of the Arabic word “Egyptian” placed above all the photos, proudly showing it was missing one letter. Some Egyptians took the banner as an offense to the nation and not even the public apologies made by officials could make that go away so easily.