U.S. fashion retailer American Eagle Outfitters wanted to make a splash with its new advertising campaign starring 27-year-old actor Sydney Sweeney. The ad blitz included “clever, even provocative language” and was “definitely going to push buttons,” the company’s chief marketing officer told trade media outlets.
It has. The question now is whether some of the public reactions the fall denim campaign produced is what American Eagle intended.
Titled “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” the campaign sparked a debate about race, Western beauty standards, and the backlash to “woke” American politics and culture. Most of the negative reception focused on videos that used the word “genes” instead of “jeans” when discussing the blonde-haired, blue-eyed actor known for the HBO series “Euphoria” and “White Lotus.”
Some critics saw the wordplay as a nod, either unintentional or deliberate, to eugenics, a discredited theory that held humanity could be improved through selective breeding for certain traits.
Marcus Collins, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, said the criticism could have been avoided if the ads showed models of various races making the “genes” pun.
“You can either say this was ignorance, or this was laziness, or say that this is intentional,” Collins said. “Either one of the three aren’t good.”
Other commenters accused detractors of reading too much into the campaign’s message.
“I love how the leftist meltdown over the Sydney Sweeney ad has only resulted in a beautiful white blonde girl with blue eyes getting 1000x the exposure for her ‘good genes,’” former Fox News host Megyn Kelly wrote Tuesday on X.
American Eagle didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
A snapshot of American Eagle
The ad blitz comes as the teen retailer, like many merchants, wrestles with sluggish consumer spending and higher costs from tariffs. American Eagle reported that total sales were down 5% for its February-April quarter compared to a year earlier.
A day after Sweeney was announced as the company’s latest celebrity collaborator, American Eagle’s stock closed more than 4% up. Shares were volatile this week and trading nearly 2% down Wednesday.
Like many trendy clothing brands, American Eagle has to differentiate itself from other mid-priced chains with a famous face or by saying something edgy, according to Alan Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce.
Adamson said the Sweeney campaign shares a lineage with Calvin Klein jeans ads from 1980 that featured a 15-year-old Brooke Shields saying, “You want to know what comes in between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” Some TV networks declined to air the spots because of its suggestive double entendre and Shields’ age.
“It’s the same playbook: a very hot model saying provocative things shot in an interesting way,” Adamson said.
Billboards, Instagram and Snapchat
Chief Marketing Officer Craig Brommers told industry news website Retail Brew last week that “Sydney is the biggest get in the history of American Eagle,” and the company would promote the partnership in a way that matched.
The campaign features videos of Sweeney wearing slouchy jeans in various settings. She will appear on 3-D billboards in Times Square and elsewhere, speaking to users on Snapchat and Instagram, and in an AI-enabled try-on feature.
American Eagle also plans to launch a limited edition Sydney jean to raise awareness of domestic violence, with sales proceeds going to a nonprofit crisis counseling service.
In a news release, the company noted “Sweeney’s girl next door charm and main character energy – paired with her ability to not take herself too seriously – is the hallmark of this bold, playful campaign.”
Jeans, genes and their many meanings
In one video, Sweeney walks toward an American Eagle billboard of her and the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great genes.” She crosses out “genes” and replaces it with “jeans.”
But what critics found the most troubling was a teaser video in which Sweeney says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.”
The video appeared on American Eagle’s Facebook page and other social media channels but is not part of the campaign.
While remarking that someone has good genes is sometimes used as a compliment, the phrase also has sinister connotations. Eugenics gained popularity in early 20th century America, and Nazi Germany embraced it to carry out Adolf Hitler’s plan for an Aryan master race.
Civil rights activists have noted signs of eugenics regaining a foothold through the far right’s promotion of the “great replacement theory,” a racist ideology that alleges a conspiracy to diminish the influence of white people.
Shalini Shankar, a cultural and linguistic anthropologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, said she had problems with American Eagle’s “genes” versus “jeans” because it exacerbates a limited concept of beauty.
“American Eagle, I guess, wants to rebrand itself for a particular kind of white privileged American,” Shankar said. “And that is the kind of aspirational image they want to circulate for people who want to wear their denim.”
A cultural shift in advertising
Many critics compared the American Eagle ad to a misstep by Pepsi in 2017, when it released a TV ad that showed model Kendall Jenner offer a can of soda to a police officer while ostensibly stepping away from a photo shoot to join a crowd of protesters.
Viewers mocked the spot for appearing to trivialize protests of police killings of Black people. Pepsi apologized and pulled the ad.
The demonstrations that followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis pushed many U.S. companies to make their advertising better reflect consumers of all races.
Some marketers say they’ve observed another shift since President Donald Trump returned to office and moved to abolish all federal DEI programs and policies.
Jazmin Burrell, founder of brand consulting agency Lizzie Della Creative Strategies, said she’s noticed while shopping with her cousin more ads and signs that prominently feature white models.
“I can see us going back to a world where diversity is not really the standard expectation in advertising,” Burrell said.
American Eagle’s past and future
American Eagle has been praised for diverse marketing in the past, including creating a denim hijab in 2017 and offering its Aerie lingerie brand in a wide range of sizes. A year ago, the company released a limited edition denim collection with tennis star Coco Gauff.
The retailer has an ongoing diversity, equity and inclusion program that is primarily geared toward employees. Two days before announcing the Sweeney campaign, American Eagle named the latest recipients of its scholarship award for employees who are driving anti-racism, equality and social justice initiatives.
Marketing experts offer mixed opinions on whether the attention surrounding “good jeans” will be good for business.
“They were probably thinking that this is going to be their moment,” Myles Worthington, the founder and CEO of marketing and creative agency WORTHI. “But this is doing the opposite and deeply distorting their brand.”
Melissa Murphy, a marketing professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, said she liked certain parts of the campaign but hoped it would be expanded to showcase people besides Sweeney for the “sake of the brand.”
Other experts say the buzz is good even if it’s not uniformly positive.
“If you try to follow all the rules, you’ll make lots of people happy, but you’ll fail,” Adamson said. “The rocket won’t take off. ”
