American Eagle Needs To End Its Sydney Sweeney Campaign

Forbes

21 hours ago

Among consumers aged 15 to 25, American Eagle Outfitters makes the most popular jeans. For years the brand's marketing has tapped into just the right tone of what those consumers want and delivered a product with a well-earned reputation for great fit at an opening price point today of $36.
Jeans have been the backbone of the brand's relevance and performed consistently. In 2023, the core denim business generated almost $1.6 billion of revenue for the company.
Recently, American Eagle created a marketing campaign with the rising starlet Sydney Sweeney (known for her roles on the TV shows Euphoria and The White Lotus). The tag line of the campaign has been 'Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.'
The campaign is a play on the word 'genes' and highlights Sweeney's blue eyes and blonde hair.
In one ad, Sweeney is quoted saying, "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color," and adding, "My jeans are blue."
The campaign has generated backlash from consumers who believe it highlights white privilege and discriminates against minorities and people with different bodies and skin than idealized, white, young people.
So Here's The Problem
You'd think that all the attention the campaign is getting, even the criticism, would be good for the brand. And for a while, it seemed like it will work as intended.
But recent data from Placer.ai indicates that consumers are literally voting with their feet and not in a good way. Store visits to American Eagle stores are now down compared with the prior year.
The Road To Hell
For its part, American Eagle says the campaign "is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story. We'll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.'
I believe American Eagle and that the messaging that people are hearing was unintended. I've met senior executives there and they are all uniformly impressive and focused on their business.
But good intentions doesn't matter. Consumers decide what they hear and their decision is the only one that counts.
It's clearly left-leaning consumers that are objecting to the campaign. And given the ascendancy of the right in our politics right now, avoiding American Eagle is one way consumers can exercise power when they are feeling powerless.
Because American Eagle depends on the sale of jeans to young consumers and because younger people are more likely to be left-leaning, American Eagle is especially vulnerable to this kind of consumer reaction.
It's possible that other things are causing negative store traffic but given how dramatically it has turned, it seems likely that the campaign is the culprit.
The Only Choice
Whatever the intentions were originally, the campaign is now counter-messaging to a huge segment of American Eagle's audience and getting involved with issues that are hurting it.
And now the numbers are showing it.
So the campaign has to end. It will undoubtedly cost money to exit the campaign but it seems unlikely that keeping the campaign is worth having reduced store traffic on the order of 10% year-over-year.
American Eagle will undoubtedly create a more anodyne campaign to follow this one. The last thing it needs now is more attention on this campaign.
Hopefully it happens as soon as possible. Market positions like American Eagle Outfitters has with young consumers are almost impossible to create at this scale. Preserving that position is key and quick action needs to be taken.