NEW YORK—Teen retailer American Eagle Outfitters has a message to its critics, who took difficulty over its denim advert marketing campaign with 27-year-old actress Sydney Sweeney that sparked a debate over race and Western magnificence requirements. The marketing campaign, the retailer mentioned, was at all times in regards to the denims.
In a press release posted on American Eagle’s Instagram account on Friday, the retailer mentioned the advert marketing 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 primary time the teenager retailer responded to days of backlash for the reason that advert with the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” launched on July 23.
Within the run-up to the advert blitz, the corporate’s chief advertising officer advised commerce media retailers that it included “clever, even provocative language” and was “definitely going to push buttons.”
It’s unclear if the corporate knew how a lot controversy the advert might elevate.
A lot of the unfavorable reception targeted on movies that used the phrase “genes” as an alternative of “jeans” when discussing the blonde-haired, blue-eyed actress identified for the HBO sequence “Euphoria” and “White Lotus.”
Critics discovered probably the most troubling was a teaser video through 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 Fb web page and different social media channels however isn’t a part of the advert marketing campaign.
Some critics noticed the wordplay as a nod, both unintentional or deliberate, to eugenics, a discredited principle that held humanity could possibly be improved by means of selective breeding for sure traits.
Different commenters accused detractors of studying an excessive amount of into the marketing campaign’s message.
Some advertising specialists mentioned the excitement is at all times good even when it’s not uniformly optimistic.
“If you try to follow all the rules, you’ll make lots of people happy, but you’ll fail,” Allen Adamson, co-founder of promoting consultancy Metaforce mentioned. “The rocket won’t take off.”
By Anne D’Inocenzio
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