Paramilitary Aggression, Rebranded

If your company produces a crappy operating system that the public largely rejects, you can either fix the operating system, which is really hard, or you can create a marketing campaign to convince people that there is no problem with the operating system. This is hard, too, but perhaps not as hard as making a better operating system.

If you're a soft drink company with flagging sales, you could either come up with a drink that tastes good and doesn't cause diabetes, which is really hard, or you could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new brand identity. This is hard, too, but perhaps not as hard as making a better beverage.

So naturally, if you're Blackwater, known around the world as a brutal, merciless, and violent military contractor, you can change the culture and approach of your work (or get out of private warfare altogether), which is hard, or you can give your brand a complete overhaul. This is hard, too, but perhaps not as hard as stopping the killing.


This above is the until-recently logo. This logo was "refined" in late 2007 from an earlier version that was even more obvious in its cross-hair approach. The refinement apparently didn't have the desired effect, since it didn't change their reputation as an unaccountable killing machine.

So the next logical step is to change everything. Remember Phillip Morris? They created a parent organization called Altria to give the company a friendlier face to investors who didn't necessarily want to hold shares in a company producing cancer sticks.

Blackwater is now Xe (pronounced like the letter z in America, not like zed in Britain). And because the new State Department says it will not renew its contracts with Blackwater, Xe will also be shifting its focus away from "private security."

Xe will be the parent brand for all of Blackwater's sub-brands, none of which will include "Blackwater" in the name.

I can't seem to find the new logo online yet, but if it's still in progress I've got some ideas. I'm envisioning a family of dogs, riddled with bullets, puppies bleeding profusely. Underneath, the name and tagline: "Xe: the softer side of private warfare" or something along those lines. I'll keep working on it, but I think I'm onto something...