Sydney Sweeney for American Eagle and Her “Great Jeans”

Source: American Eagle

In just the last few days, American Eagle launched a new campaign featuring American actress Sydney Sweeney and that’s all it took for people to weigh in on it.

Essentially, the campaign used a play on the word “jeans” and “genes,” making reference to Sydney’s great jeans she is wearing and her great genes as a (well I suppose) beautiful woman.

Now first of all, marketers, by now we should all know that if you are going to release any campaign then you need to have an issues management plan that goes along with it. Particularly if you are tapping into culture and playing into any kind of a, shall we say, provocative space. We all know now that we are going to get (social) feedback, so we need to plan for it. It should not be a shock to the system at this point. I for one was not the least bit surprised to see the feedback, and yes backlash, to this campaign. The American Eagle folks should have seen it coming too.

The full campaign features that hero video above as well as a series of shorts, outdoor billboards, and other marketing assets. In one of those videos, the word “jeans” is crossed out and replaced with the word “genes.”

The feedback and backlash did indeed come fast, and you can read a sampling of that from “USA Today” by clicking here.

In no way am I minimizing or justifying or doing anything with the upset as I am only looking at this through a marketing lens because I am a marketer and this is a marketing blog. I’ll leave the rest of the subject matter to the other subject matter experts. But there are some lessons learned here for sure.

Have an issues management plan and know how as a brand you are going to respond to feedback. Your response can actually enhance a campaign if you plan it out right. To my eye, the brand has not responded which can be a plan unto itself but that too should be a conscious plan if that’s what the brand wants to do.

And, IMHO, make sure your campaign reflects the culture and society and community within which you are appealing and operating. By representing a full range of the shopper/consumer (perhaps not just one aspect), you will show inclusivity which I believe is a hallmark of great marketing. Something that all brands should be using as a guide, again IMHO. If you only want to represent one part, then that too should be a conscious decision.

Separate topic I suppose, but this campaign does harken back to a classic denim campaign from Calvin Klein with actress Brooke Shields and I’m betting that’s a bit of what American Eagle was going for as well. A nostalgic nod at a look back? This one from Calvin Klein by the way also got considerable heat back in the day too. Take a look …

From 1980, a very different time and a very different marketing space! But interesting to see the parallels in the marketing parallel universe.

What’s are your thoughts? What’s your experience? JIM