The International Spy Museum’s new exhibit, Camouflage: Designed to Deceive, needed a launch campaign that could drive ticket sales and build awareness across Washington DC, and keep doing it beyond opening weekend. The exhibit explores the dramatic history of camouflage and This January’s campaign needed to give people a reason to care about a subject most people think they already understand. The audience is broad: DC locals, international tourists, families, history lovers and anyone who’d be surprised to learn that camouflage goes way beyond green and brown. As the museum’s creative agency of record, This January also wanted the campaign to continue to growing the brand and prove that the Spy Museum is one of the most creative cultural institutions in the country.
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Camouflage is designed to blend in, but advertising is designed to stand out. Instead of leaning into the expected — muted greens, military camo and patterns designed to blend in – This January went the opposite direction. They used bold, bright graphics pulled from actual camouflage history and then hid the subjects inside the patterns, almost like optical illusions. The goal was to make camouflage feel exciting and surprising rather than tactical and subdued.
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The first pattern This January featured is Razzle Dazzle, originally designed for World War I-era ships to confuse enemy vessels about direction and speed. The second is a custom museum-red pattern designed by its own team. Both feel nothing like what most people picture when they hear the word camouflage because the exhibit is full of stories like that, and This January wanted to the campaign to give people a taste of what they’d discover inside.
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This January partnered with photographer Ian Loring Shiver and stylist Minnie Park, and all effects were captured in-camera.
