American Eagle’s new denim campaign featuring 27-year-old actor Sydney Sweeney has sparked an online uproar around the world.
As part of the campaign, American Eagle launched the Sydney Jean. The limited-run style comes from the company’s wide-legged jeans collection. Sweeney partnered with the retailer on the project.
The Euphoria and The White Lotus actor appears in several photos and videos. One advert shows Sweeney cleaning a poster of herself wearing a denim jacket and jeans.
The poster carries a pun about denim. The original phrase reads, “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Genes.” The advert then crosses out “Genes” and replaces it with “Jeans.”
The same tagline appears across most of the campaign.
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality and even eye colour,” Sweeney says in one advert.
“My jeans are blue.”
Campaign sparks online backlash
The campaign quickly attracted criticism on social media.
Critics pointed to the use of the phrases “good genes” and “great genes.” Eugenicists have historically used those phrases when promoting selective breeding based on physical and other traits.
Marcus Collins, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, said the campaign could have avoided some criticism.
He argued that the adverts could have featured models from different racial backgrounds while using the same “genes” pun.
“You can either say this was ignorance, or this was laziness, or say that this is intentional,” Collins said.
“Either one of the three aren’t good.”
Some social media users, however, believe critics have read too much into the campaign.
Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly defended Sweeney on X.
“I love how the leftist meltdown over the Sydney Sweeney ad has only resulted in a beautiful white, blonde girl with blue eyes getting 1000x the exposure for her ‘good genes’,” Kelly wrote.
Another Instagram user questioned the campaign’s focus on Sweeney’s appearance.
“Maybe I’m too… woke, but getting a blue-eyed, blonde, white woman and focusing your campaign around her having perfect genetics feels weird…”
Another user summarised the controversy.
“It’s not just about the jeans. It’s about who gets to be the face of America’s ‘best genes.’”
Ad campaign boosts American Eagle stock
The campaign couldn’t come at a better time.
American Eagle, like many retailers, is battling with sluggish consumer spending and higher costs from tariffs.
In the February-April quarter, American Eagle reported that total sales were down 5% compared to the previous year.
The day after American Eagle announced its collaboration with Sydney Sweeney, the company’s stocks closed more than 4% up.
In total, the campaign caused the company’s stock to spike by 16%.
Analysts pointed to meme stock behaviour, a viral surge driven by retail traders on Reddit and Stocktwits, not by fundamentals.
Like AMC or GameStop, American Eagle became a momentary favourite based on online buzz and speculation.
Marketing ads are one of the ways companies can stand out in the present world.
The Sweeney campaign “was a company figuring out how to break through in a world where everyone is screaming and saying, ‘Look at me, look at me!”, co-founder of brand marketing firm Metaforce, Allen Adamson said.
Sweeney’s adverts were compared to Brooke Shields’ ad campaign for Calvin Klein jeans when she was 15.
At the time, the brand was criticised for sexualising the underage Shields, who told Vogue in 2021 that she thought the criticism was ‘ridiculous.’
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