NEW YORKโTeen retailer American Eagle Outfitters has a message to its critics, who took issue over its denim ad campaign with 27-year-old actress 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 Eagleโs Instagram account on Friday, the retailer said the ad campaign โis 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.โ
The message marked the first time the teen retailer responded to days of backlash since the ad with the tagline โSydney Sweeney has great jeansโ launched on July 23.
In the run-up to the ad blitz, the companyโs chief marketing officer told trade media outlets that it included โclever, even provocative languageโ and was โdefinitely going to push buttons.โ
Itโs unclear if the company knew how much controversy the ad could raise.
Most of the negative reception focused on videos that used the word โgenesโ instead of โjeansโ when discussing the blonde-haired, blue-eyed actress known for the HBO series โEuphoriaโ and โWhite Lotus.โ
Critics found the most troubling was a teaser video in which Sweeney says, โGenes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.โ
The video appeared on American Eagleโs 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 campaignโs message.
Some marketing experts said the buzz is always good even if itโs not uniformly positive.
โIf you try to follow all the rules, youโll make lots of people happy, but youโll fail,โ Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce said. โThe rocket wonโt take off.โ