NEW YORK (AP) — Teen retailer American Eagle Outfitters has a message to its critics, who took issue over its denim ad campaign with 27-year-old actor Sydney Sweeney that sparked a debate over race and Western beauty standards. The campaign, the retailer said, was always about the jeans.
In a statement posted on American Eagle's Instagram account on Friday, the retailer said the ad 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.”
The message marked the first time the teen retailer responded to days of backlash since the ad with the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” launched last week.
In the run-up to the ad blitz, the company's chief marketing officer told trade media outlets that it included “clever, even provocative language” and was “definitely going to push buttons."
It's unclear if the company knew how much controversy the ad could raise.
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.”
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 ad campaign.
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.
Other commenters accused detractors of reading too much into the campaign’s message.
Some marketing experts said the buzz is always 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,” Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce said. “The rocket won’t take off.”
Before you consider Meta Platforms, you'll want to hear this.
MarketBeat keeps track of Wall Street's top-rated and best performing research analysts and the stocks they recommend to their clients on a daily basis. MarketBeat has identified the five stocks that top analysts are quietly whispering to their clients to buy now before the broader market catches on... and Meta Platforms wasn't on the list.
While Meta Platforms currently has a Moderate Buy rating among analysts, top-rated analysts believe these five stocks are better buys.
View The Five Stocks Here
Enter your email address and we'll send you MarketBeat's guide to investing in 5G and which 5G stocks show the most promise.
Get This Free Report
Like this article? Share it with a colleague.
Link copied to clipboard.