todd webb: New York City 6th Avenue in 1948, between West 43rd & 44th - UHQ Photo

The enlarged panorama, 93 feet long by 11 1/2 feet high, completely fills the thirteen windows of ICP along West 43rd Street. In great detail, it shows the many small shops that existed in 1948 along the west side of Sixth Avenue between West 43rd and 44th Streets. Today, this block is home to the museum of the International Center of Photography. Many of the storefronts feature bars and record shops, but on the far left is the Hanover House hotel where, in 1940, songwriter Woody Guthrie composed his well-known ballad, "This Land Is Your Land."

Special edition launch: Marmite XO

Core Design has created an exclusive run of 200 hand-crafted jars for the launch of new extra-matured Marmite ‘XO’. A brand iconic in the UK, which has remained virtually unchanged for decades. The new flavour variant has been developed through an innovative social media campaign, creatively directed by The Core. In a unique example of consumer engagement, the brand offered its thirty biggest fans (so-called ‘super-lovers’) the chance to be inducted into a secret society, The Marmarati...

There they were given responsibility for refining the flavour, telling their story via blogs, social media sites and recruiting a wider group of members. Thanks to their work, hundreds of Lovers submitted proof of their love to www.marmarati.org in the hope of being initiated into The Marmarati’s ‘Second Circle’. One hundred and sixty made the grade.

Tasked with creating a beautiful, highly-collectable piece to reward this group for their efforts and welcome them into the society, The Core focussed on building rich vintage cues around Marmite’s key equities: black and gold. Each jar was hand-dipped in black wax and stamped with the gold crest of the Marmarati. The lids were finished with a watchstrap detail, individually signed and numbered by Lord Marmarati himself.

The resulting packs arrived with fans, selected press and buyers with an accompanying ‘taster’ jar of the finished XO product. Says Unilever’s Tom Denyard, Marketing Manager for Marmite, “The commemorative jar had to be something special – we were asking people to give up their time to submit proof of their love for the brand and the jar was their reward. It’s a testament to the quality of the design that when we ‘leaked’ images of how it would look, Twitter and Facebook exploded with conversation and entries increased threefold. Our Lovers just had to have one.”

Blackwater is now Xe: seriously

Blackwater Worldwide, the world’s largest private security company, made the wrong kind of headlines in 2007 when Blackwater contractors allegedly shot and killed 17 Iraqis in a crowded square in Baghdad. This resulted in protests, congressional inquiries and the Iraqi government refusing to allow the organization to operate there. As a result, Blackwater is changing its name to Xe (pronounced ZEE).

Most organizations declare that a change in name is necessary to allow a company “better define” what it does, or “clarify” a shift in services, and this is often in tandem with a repositioning of services or a shift in core competencies. Anne Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for the company, explained that Blackwater was changing its name because “the idea is to define the company as what it is today and not what it used to be.” I'm pretty sure it's still a company that gets paid to kill people. Not really sure what's changed over the past few years.

The Blackwater name has being expunged from all of its business units: Blackwater Airships (which offers surveillance services for intelligence gathering) has become Guardian Flight Systems. Blackwater Target Systems (the unit that develops and builds targets) is now being called GSD Manufacturing, and Blackwater Lodge and Training Center has been named the U.S. Training Center.

Not everyone agrees with Tyrrell. RJ Hillhouse, a national security expert and author of the blog called The Spy Who Billed Me, said the company is “obviously trying to distance itself from their image as reckless cowboys that’s etched into the world’s mind from the…shooting.” With a new name, “there are a lot of people who probably won’t connect the dots,” she said. “In a year or two, people won’t remember that’s Blackwater.” And she's right. The American public is stupid as shit and this terrible logo and rebranding should throw them off the Blackwater scent.

When asked about the name change, Robert Passikoff, president of the New York marketing research firm Brand Keys, Inc. offered this: “There’s an old saying about brands: ‘When you can’t change the product, you change the packaging,’” he said. It’s common for companies to rename in an effort to distance themselves from bad publicity, but in Blackwater’s case, things have gotten so bad that the company had little choice but dump the brand.

Tyrrell disagrees. She countered that Blackwater’s past was only one of several factors involved in the decision. “The company leaders came up with and considered several new names,” she said. “Xe had the best potential for brand identity but has no special meaning, she added.”

No special meaning indeed. The same can be said for the identity, which is a bizarre cross between a bad rendition of the old Xerox logo and the logo for Xena: Warrior Princess. As a result, the only X this rebrand deserves is for a new identity that has gone terribly, terribly wrong. This logo seems better fitted for a lame tech company, not a murder for hire outfit.