The International SPY Museum just opened a new, multi-year exhibit, called, “Camouflage: Designed to Deceive,” and its creative AOR, This January, created the launch campaign to help introduce the exhibition to the world. The exhibit gives visitors an immersive exploration of things hiding in plain sight, and takes a look at the long, colorful and fascinating history of camouflage, which centers around four main principles: to disappear, to distort, to disguise, and to deceive.
And while camouflage is about hiding, advertising is about standing out. So, playing with this dissonance, This January wanted to create a campaign that would stand out and speak to camouflage in a way that would be impossible to miss. To do that, the agency used bright, bold patterns that disguises the subject itself within the image, almost like an optical illusion.
“One story told in the exhibit is about Operation Hollywood during WWII, where an entire fake town was built to camouflage military action so that planes flying overhead would never see anything out of sorts,” said Zach Goodwin, Co-Founder & CCO of This January. “Using that similar thinking, we wanted to make folks think about camouflage differently too. Certainly military camouflage is an important aspect of the story, but there are plenty of different kinds of camouflage beyond the classic pattern featured in the exhibit, so we wanted to give people a taste of what they’d see there through this campaign.”
This launch campaign focuses on two patterns: one historical darling, Razzle Dazzle, and one contemporary take on camouflage, which is a SPY-red branded pattern designed by the International SPY Museum team. Razzle Dazzle is a camouflage pattern that was originally designed for use in WWI for ships to confuse the enemy about the direction or speed of the ship. It’s not clear if it was successful, but after use in WWI and WWII, it’s a surprising and creative story of camouflage during war. To pay homage to that story, This January partnered with photographer Ian Loring Shiver and stylist Minnie Park, and hand-crafted every single prop you see in the campaign, including hand painting the shoes with that pattern. All effects were captured on camera.
“The dissonance of trying to advertise something that’s designed by nature to be overlooked was a key challenge for the campaign. Instead of trying to blend in, our camouflage purposefully stands out,” said Maggie Winters, Co-Founder & CCO of This January. “As the Spy Museum’s creative agency of record, our overall goal is to continue building the brand and ticket sales year after year, as well as leaning more into brand awareness with this campaign since the exhibit will be open for multiple years.”
The exhibit opened this month, and the campaign can be found across Washington D.C. in OOH, direct mail, display, and one full bus wrap driving around the city. This January will also launch additional OOH in key areas around the city throughout the year, continuing to blanket D.C. in the historic camo pattern for local and international visitors alike.
