American Eagle Doubles Down On Sydney Sweeney After Failed Boycott

Actress Sydney Sweeney is once again appearing in an American Eagle ad campaign, months after a previous promotion sparked widespread backlash. 

“What brand am I wearing?” Sweeney asks in the new commercial while sporting denim shorts. “Yeah, that one,” the “Euphoria” star says as the words “SYD FOR SHORT” flash across the screen.

 

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The new ad spot references the original jeans campaign, which made headlines for months and delivered a significant boost to the company’s sales. 

Last summer, all hell broke loose over the campaign featuring Sweeney in various seductive poses while saying she had “good jeans.” The double entendre with the word “genes” made leftists deem the ad racist, noting that Sweeney is white with blond hair and blue eyes.

In one of the ads, 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.”

American Eagle responded to the backlash at the time with a statement defending the campaign.

“‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story,” the company said. “We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”

Despite leftist calls for a boycott, the denim collection did exceptionally well, with most of the featured pieces selling out. 

American Eagle’s chief marketing officer, Craig Brommers, told USA Today that the company’s stock jumped by 22% thanks to that campaign.

“A vast, vast, vast majority of Americans understood that the campaign was about jeans,” Brommers told the outlet, crediting Sweeney’s “duality” of being both casual and glamorous as the reason for the campaign’s success.

“American Eagle has a store in all 50 states and during that campaign, we saw new customer acquisition grow in every single county in America,” he added. “It is a fact that it was the most successful campaign in the history of the American Eagle brand.” 

“The world is curious and the world will be talking when we launch the campaign,” Brommers said. “As we learned in the fall campaign, there is noise, but there are also facts as well, and we’re excited to see where this campaign takes our brand.”