Watching brands awkwardly market themselves to ‘the youth’ is an endless source of schadenfreude online. A prime example came with the much-ridiculed January rebrand of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
As well as a bizarre new logo reminiscent of an illegal techno rave promotional flyer from the late 1990s, the CIA’s campaign prominently features people of colour in its advertisements in a bid to shake off its reputation for employing mostly Ivy-League-educated white men. With targeted recruitment ads running on streaming services, and a flashy new Instagram account, CIA director Gina Haspel hopes to kick the security service’s ‘representation’ into overdrive.
