The worst headline ever written

A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through LinkedIn (look, I was bored, OK?) when I stumbled across this headline.

I think you’ll agree that it raises several questions. Questions such as ‘WTF is going on here?’ and ‘How can I get those 2 seconds of my life back?’.

I hate this headline so much that I would prefer to just ignore it and erase all traces of its memory with a bottle of methanol-contaminated bootleg Siberian vodka. But I’m a professional and I’m here to educate.

So where to start?

First, let’s consider the word ‘innovation’. On a corporate cliché scale of 1 to 10, innovation rates a ‘Sweet baby Jesus make it stop’. Overused, pretentious, and almost always meaningless, it is the mother of all motherhood statements.

Other than that, it’s great. (To use a G-rated version of a line from Bob Hoffman.)

So we’re not off to a good start. But there’s more to the awfulness of this headline. Much more.

Next is the excruciating concept of an ‘insight innovation’. This genuinely baffles me. Precisely how would one apply innovation to an insight? Does it mean that you have an insight but then realise it was a bit of a crap insight, so you come up with a new one? I don’t get it.

Anyway, if we assume that an ‘insight innovation’ actually means something (it doesn’t), my next question is how it might be ‘validated’. Is it like a parking ticket?

As you can see, I don’t have satisfactory answers to these questions. But what I do know is that this appears to be a genuine contender for the worst headline ever written.

So I suggested this on Twitter, and challenged people to prove me wrong. These are some of the glorious examples I received in response.

Do you have another one to throw into the mix? Feel free to send it my way.